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Modern Poet Prophets 



ESSAYS 

CRITICAL AND INTERPRETATIVE 



BY 

WM. NORMAN GUTHRIE. 



y^y-i-^ 1 



CINCINNATI 

THE ROBERT CLARKE COMPANY 

1897 



-pri 1077 



Copyright, 1897, 
By THE ROBERT CLARKE COMPANY 



TO 

ANNA NORTON GUTHRIE. 

THE FIRST FRUITS OF OUR LONG-SHARED STUDIES AND 

ENTHUSIASMS BELONG, NOT IN VIRTUE OF THE ALL 

BUT OBSOLETE COURTESY OF A SENTIMENTAL 

DEDICATION, BUT BY OLD PROPRIETARY 

RIGHTS IN WHATEVER GOOD THEY 

MAY CONTAIN. 



Through the purple portal of that heart of thine 
Where sets the sun of self in sumptuous state, 
Pass on, with earth's full beauty insatiate, 

To where no range of mountainous hopes confine 

Thy vision clear; thou, who dost life resign, 
Its whole cloud-sky of follies dissipate, 
Pierce on — the inmost Splendor contemplate, 

Float rapturously on fluctuant deeps divine ! 

But O, return not thence, thou Man of Gob, 
Leave not thy bliss to teach us ; nought avails. 

We yet will tread the ways our fathers trod. 

Above earth's dusk- veiled peaks of purity, dumb, 
Stand beckoning! If thy starry summons fails, 

Will cries and tears and pleadings make us come ? 



A WORD TO THE READER, 

For a number of years I had planned a volume 
of essays that should attempt to set forth a view of 
the poets not usually taken by modern readers. It 
seemed to me, and still seems, that while the poets 
are not exactly "God's only truth-tellers," yet they do 
bring the scientific truths and speculations, the moral 
and social ideals of their period, to the test of beauty ; 
they serve to make us feel the difference between the 
respectable and the heroic; the half-truth, brilliant 
but death-dealing, and the vital and quickening 
whole-truth; the pleasurable is found to be quite dis- 
tinct from the beautiful, and the ordinary aims of life 
shabb}^, mean, or base; success is shown to be not 
half so desirable as merit; the hypocrisies of life are 
made to seem hypocrisies. 

The poets are the most effective preachers be- 
cause they do not preach. Their failures are as in- 
structive as their successes. We learn from the for- 
mer often that no amount of art can make what is 
unbeautiful permanently pleasing. While their suc- 
•cesses, as "joys forever," or rather well-springs of 
joy, do more than teach. What we need is not so 
much to know, as to love the truth. We usually fail 
rather in will than in discrimination. The true and 
great poets make us love the truth, and loving it, em- 



VI A WORD TO THE READER. 

body it. They show us that the truth is large. Leo- 
pardi makes us feel that Pessimism is true. Shelley 
makes us surer still of Optimism. A Browning will 
make us see the relation between both moods, as parts 
of a larger, more human view of life. 

In the original circulars, other essays were in- 
cluded which the exigencies of bookmaking have 
forced me to" omit. It had been my intention to end 
with Tennyson and Robert Browning, and to make 
an essay on Blake, the poet and seer, accompany that 
on Shelley's Prometheus. If the present volume does 
not complete my design, I shall be at all events com- 
forted by the thought that I shall have more time 
and space to treat of these and others more nearly as 
they deserve in some future volume. 

The first essay in the book is not, strictly speak- 
ing, an essay at all, being merely a lecture, with 
such faults as a hastily prepared lecture is likely to 
suffer from. It appears where it does out of consid- 
eration for a number who heard it and were desirous 
of seeing it in print. I should also acid that four of 
the seven essays that constitute the matter of this 
book have appeared previously in the Sewanee Re- 
view, a quarterly periodical of criticism, Political, 
Religious and Literacy, to whose genial and able 
editor I am indebted for many little suggestions in 
those four, and in fact also for the existence of one 
of them, written, as it was, at his suggestion. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Introductory Essay. 

page. 
Ideal Womanhood in the Masterpieces of Dante, Goethe and 

Eobert Browning, ....... 7 

1. Beatrice, and Mary, Queen of Heaven, . . 8 

2. Gretchen of Faust, 15 

3. Pippa, Poinpilia, James Lee's Wife, and "Lyric Love," 23 



I. Leopard! and Evolutional Pessimism, 

II. " Obermann " of Senancour and Matthew Arnold, 
or Morals divorced from Theology, 

III. Agnostic Poets of our Day. 

1 . England's Agnostic Poets, 

2. Arthur Hugh Clough, 

3. Algernon Charles Swinburne, 

4. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 

5. Matthew Arnold, 

IV. The .Prometheus Unbound of Shelley, a Drama of 

Human Destiny. 

1. Shelley, Rebel and Reformer, 

2. The Prometheus Unbound, . 

3. Prometheus Unbound and Faust, 

4. The Prometheus Unbound, an org£ 

5. Prometheus Bound, 

6. Shelley's Philosophy, 

7. Prometheus, 

8. The Story of Prometheus, 

9. Elements of Salvation, . 

10. Jupiter, .... 

11. Demogorgon, 

12. An Imperishable Poem, 

(vii) 



anic 



whole, 



36 

61 

90 
102 
110 
115 
123 



146 
149 
154 
159 
163 
167 
171 
175 
181 
186 
191 
199 



Vlll 



CONTENTS. 



V. The Permanence of Art, or Art and Ontology, 
VI. Realistic Art on the Stage: Gerhardt Haupt- 

MANN, 

VII. Walt Whitman, the Camden Sage 

1. Introductory Remarks, . 

2. AY hat is Religion? . 

3. Divine Pride, . 

4. Worship, 

5. The Problem of Evil, 

6. Salvation and the Savior, 

7. Immortality, 

8. Personal Identity, . 

9. Perpetuity of Character, 

10. Traveling Souls and their End, 

11. Whitman's Methods and Style, 

12. " So long," .... 

Appendix. 

Note (1) A Section of the Rose of the Blessed, 

Note (2) Wordsworth's Practical Philosophy, 

Note (3) Shelley's Use of the Word "Annihilation, 

Note (4) lone and Panthea, 

Note (5) Coleridge's Theosophy, 

Note (6) Shelley's Serpent Myth, . 

Note (7) Byron as Chanter of Personality, 

Note (8) A Hostile Critique on Whitman, 



PAfiE. 

203- 

228 

244 
248 
259- 
209 
277 
290 
296 
304 
310 
314 
318 
327 

333 
334 
336 
337 
338 
340 
341 
343 



Modern Poet Prophets. 

ESSAYS CRITICAL AND INTERPRETATIVE. 



IDEAL WOMANHOOD IN DANTE, GOETHE 
AND BROWNING. 



The days for male egotism, blatant and bellow- 
ing, are fast drawing to a painful close. The signs of 
the times are not hard to discern. Dire and porten- 
tous, with snaky locks, they glare us, proud and hith- 
erto undoubted sovereigns of nature, savagely in the 
face. We have harnessed steam, yoked the lightning, 
scaled Olympus and feasted in the golden houses of 
the gods. But it were futile to contend against Fate. 
And why is our doom sealed? The foe is within, 
holding the keys of our heart, wearing the crown of 
our glory ! 

Though the Germans and Celts may dispute with 
one another the honor of having first affirmed the 
equality of man and woman, was it not in any case in 
its completeness a doctrine of the Christ? If St. Paul 
be understood to have apprehended it imperfectly, 
does it alter the fact that it is Christ's? Is not the 
glorification of humility, gentleness, tenderness, pa- 
tience, fortitude and faithfulness the glorification in 

(7) 



8 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

very deed of mother, wife, sister and daughter? The 
Dark Ages, so called, the ages of much faith in Christ, 
but more sensual violence, greed, cruelty, craft and 
fatuous bigotry (always reducible to faith in self), what 
were the) 7 if not the period of gestation for the Chris- 
tian ideal of womanhood, which has found its ade- 
quate expression (perverse enough, some will think) 
in the modern doctrine concerning the Blessed Virgin, 
Queen of Heaven, daughter, bride and Mother of 
God? Few can be trusted to tell fitly the man) 7 
myths of immaculate Mary — lovely flowers that sprang 
from holy soil — quivering rays of a miraculous Au- 
rora — snatches of celestial song caught as the doors 
of Paradise opened and closed admitting earth's 
godly women. Of those myths it is not my pur- 
pose to speak. My object is more modest, to trace 
through Dante, Goethe and Browning the growth in 
definiteness of this ideal and its increasing ability to 
make for itself a home by the hearthstone of ordinary 
men, as expressed in its more and more substantial 
life-likeness of poetic incarnation. 

I. BEATRICE AND MARY, QUEEN OF HEAVEN. 

What a wonderful artistic intimation of that 
which it is not lawful for man to utter have we not 
in Dante's Rose of the blessed ! A cup of lunar 
crystal brimful of a sunny supernatural wine ; a vast 
sea lying breathless in contemplative ecstasy beneath 
the hovering heaven, interrogating reverently its 
height, and flashing back the vouchsafed answer in 
a trance of mirrored glory — the grateful worship of 
its quickened deep ; and after every figure has been 
exhausted do we not return to Dante's Rose? Tiers 



BEATRICE AND MARY, QUEEN OF HEAVEN. \) 

of holy souls — the petals ; the angels, like sunbeams — 
busy bees of God — ascending, descending, translucent 
to those below, of visible beauty to those above, bring- 
ing down pearly dew-drops of divine grace and love, 
carrying up the perfume of devout wishes and the 
honey of saintly praise ! Is not this wonderful Rose 
a thing for silent wonder, to brood over until the rap- 
ture of adoration closes the sense, and thought is trans- 
figured, etherealized, to that hushed feeling we dare 
not seem to note lest it forsake us, which is wont to 
betoken the spiritual nearness of some one dearly 
loved, and long, long missed ? 

But it is not in search of mystic lore and trans- 
port Ave shall now cast a glance athwart the holy Rose, 
but to ascertain the nature of Ideal Womanhood, and 
to analyze it if we may into irreducible constituents. 
Indeed, as it passed through the quivering atmosphere 
of Dante's vision the integral iridescent ray divides 
into its seven distinct hues of virtue, a society of sym- 
bolic women that ennesh them, arranged in a Godward 
scale. Let us hope we shall not be too fanciful in the 
interpretation of each particular hieroglyph ; but, at 
all events, we are sure that the purport of the inscrip- 
tion as a whole is too clear for any reasonable doubt 
or misconstruction. 

We begin with the lowest round of this strange 
Jacob's ladder, in which the rounds are the very angels 
themselves, immovable forever, on which not they, but 
Dante, you and I, can ascend at will in the spirit to 
heaven. 

First and simplest element of ideal womanhood 
is the courage of love to forsake the surroundiugs of 
childhood, to snap individual ties, to follow the fate 



10 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

and share the chance of those whom in the guise of 
dependence she upholds, strengthens, comforts : — Ruth. 

As second element, we have the courage of love to 
defend her home and neighboring homes by the heroic 
performance of deeds such as their safety seems to 
require, but which are in themselves otherwise re- 
pugnant to her, and fraught with danger to what she 
knows to be the most precious of herself in the sight 
of men : — Judith. 

As third element, we have the courage to for- 
sake the loves and duties of girlhood, father and 
mother, brothers and sisters, for a husband far away; 
the known and tried and loved for the unknown, un- 
tried, yet not unloved; the trust that what she loves 
before she knows is altogether worthy of her devotion, 
or will become so : — Rebecca. 

As fourth element, we have the courage to hold 
and impart her faith in Love. She has learned from 
Abraham, the Friend of God! and she teaches Isaac, 
"the child of promise :" — Sarah. 

In her we have the crown of natural womanhood. 
The usual idealizing power of meu mounts no higher. 
More than wife to the friend of God, and mother of 
the faithful, woman surely can not be expected to be- 
come ! But such is not the view of Dante. Sarah, 
the crown of natural womanhood, is in turn the foot- 
stool only of a higher womanhood still — the spiritual. 
Not wife to " the friend of God," but " bride of God " 
himself; not " mother of the faithful" " servant of 
God," but Mother of the Faithful Son of God himself! 
Such is the burst of glory that man has beheld, and 
less than its luster and loveliness he dare not now on 
his soul's peril require. 



BEATRICE AND MARY, QUEEN OF HEAVEN. 11 

Let us begin our ascent once more with Sarah 
(courage to defend and transmit a traditional faith), 
and arrive at the fifth element (the second of the 
higher quaternary), the courage to forsake a tradi- 
tional faith and its ease, in order to seek, and seeking 
to find, a personal revelation of the Divine, an assur- 
ance incommunicable direct^, but which so celestial- 
izes its receiver as to compel and captivate others till 
they too seek and find ; inner contemplation, oblivous, 
though nowise scornful, of religious externals : — 
Rachel; whence is derived an ever-increasing, imme- 
diate knowledge of that which gives all those externals 
what value they have, not merely blissful but bliss- 
giving : — Beatrice. 

As sixth element (third of the higher qua- 
ternary), we have the courage of her who has seen 
Paradise to bring forth such as may not ever see it, 
for aught she knows ; to suffer for, and lovingly 
to foster offspring that will rise and curse her when 
they sin, with coward soul attributing their own falls 
and foulness to her who gave them life, at cost not 
merely of her bodily substance, but also of that most 
precious leisure which would let her continue, in studi- 
ous trance of faith, to realize with secret joy the Para- 
dise of God within : — Eve, the mother of all living ! of all 
who truly live; children of a self-oblation to the cause 
of humanity ; children that need saving to be sure, but 
are called to that salvation in the everlasting purpose 
of the Holy One. 

Again we have reached the crown, — the greater 
Sarah. And who is she? 

White bride of God, sweet Mary maid, 
At Gabriel's greeting sore afraid 



12 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

Did under thee thy white knees sink ? 
Did thy free hair fall down, a veil, 
Betwixt his glory and thine so pale ? 
Thine hands clasped tight, 
Thine eyes tear-bright, — 
What thought of wonder didst thou think? 

" Fear not " there swelled a musical tone 
That wrought a mystic peace unknown ; 
Tingled the air, and thy gasped breath 
Drew in a fragrant cool delight, 
Lifting the soul with holy might 
Till thou didst rise 
With shamefast eyes : 
" Speak, the Lord's handmaid harkeneth." 

What gracious greeting, Gabriel, 
As thine so sweetly terrible? 

Yea,— like a lily dew-beladen 
Whom thrills and shakes the morning air 
To warble of birds, — on thy feet bare 
Fall happy showers— 
Thy tears and ours — 
White bride of God, sweet Mary maiden ! 

The angel gone, she mused and prayed, 
On bended knees, pure Mary maid: 

Nor feared what hearts incredulous 
Would dare devise, for only she 
Disposed herself God's bride to be ; 
In meekest mind 
To all else blind 
But God's sweet grace all glorious. 

Tell, tell us, sacred Lily of God, 
In what weird dream thy white feet trod, 
For days and nights with joy amazed ? 
As rests the smooth sea hyaline 
Whereon the vast blue heaven doth shine, 
O'ershadowed thee 
God's Mystery 
As on thine open heart he gazed ? 



BEATRICE AND MARY, QUEEN OF HEAVEN. 13 

Blessed, blessed blessed Rose, — 

Whom Love, of all earth's purest, chose, — 

Thy dreams be thine alone, lest we 
Should taint, for love of thee too great, 
Their tender beauty immaculate ! 
Simple girl bride, 
God magnified 
For thy very girl's simplicity ! 

Well, and what does all this signify ? As highest 
element, inclusive of all inferior elements if supersed- 
ing them (so to speak, their supernatural consumma- 
tion), we have the power of love to forsake humanity 
(its demands, its rewards) for the Divine, and become 
only and altogether receptive to It: no mere contem- 
plation (Rachel) and knowledge of It (Beatrice); not 
the mere bringing into being of the adorers of It, that 
will, maybe, scorn her (Eve), but the power of love to 
be impregnated by the Divine itself, and bear fruit to 
It ; to help its spiritual fullness to a bodily reality ; to 
make effectual its sublime condescension of will to 
the carnal needs of men, who would not believe the 
manifestations of the Word within (their spiritual eyes 
fast glued) until they touched with the coarse animal 
sense for external fact, a shadow or image of It without ; 
and such essentially and symbolically is the blessed 
Virgin Queen of Heaven : — St. Mary* 

Let us observe that these seven colors of virtue 
bear each to each in turn an indissoluble connection- 
There is a rhythm running through them of negative 
and positive, denial and assertion, forsaking and taking, 
progress and rest. The first and last are denials of self, 
forsakings of lower for higher love, progress at the cost 



* For the convenience of the reader a diagram section of the 
Rose of the Blessed will be found in the Appendix. 



14 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

of a sword-pierced heart. So we come to God by 
alternate failure and success, destruction and con- 
struction, and with St. Mary, we find " peace at the 
last," in letting God have and do and be our — nay — 
His all in all. It is also worth noting how she is pro- 
tected — rather escorted for mere honor's sake — into the 
presence of her Sufficiency. At her left is Adam, 
the father of the natural savable race, assisted to 
higher things by Moses, the apostle of the Law. At 
her right is St. Peter, the father (by courtesy) of the race 
supernatural and saved, in his own words " partakers 
of the Divine nature," * seconded by St. John, the 
apostle of Charity, who speaks of the " unction " or 
Christhood, which we " have from the Holy One" 
Himself, f love of "Love," and therefore "very god 
of very God." + 



*2 Pet. i., 4. t 1 Jno. ii., 20, and 1 Jno. iv., 7, 8. 

% One can not help in passing the observation that by a quite 
heretical removal of Jesus from the Rose of redeemed humanity, 
and his transfer into the sheer Deity as a sort of floating platonic 
idea of Man, the ladder of manhood opposite that of womanhood 
is sadly imperfect, not to say unorthodox, if in these days the 
latter word can be considered a reproach ! John the Baptist, of 
whom Jesus said that he that was " little in the kingdom of God " 
is " greater than he " (Luke vii., 28), is made the highest crown of 
sainthood. "Repentance from dead works" has to do duty with 
men for the '■ blissful self-oblation " of St. Mary, " blessed among 
women !" Beneath him (a strange reflection, one would think, on 
their being even "little" in the kingdom of Heaven) sit St. 
Francis for Mysticism, St. Benedict for Asceticism, and St. Augus- 
tine for Theology. Below St. Augustine no one is worthy to be 
particularly mentioned as seated in his place. To the left of the 
Baptist is Lucia, presumably Greek philosophy and latter-day 
science, to his right is St. Anne, holy expectancy — the mother of 
the Virgin. No wonder, then, with such a conception of the 
Christ, mariolatry flourished and flourishes! 



GRETCHEN OF EAUST. 15 



II. GRETCHEN OF FAUST. 

It is not easy to tear oneself away from the high 
imaginations of Dante. One may or may not regard 
his symbolic system as cumbersome and obsolete ; one 
may repudiate his theology with more of horror 
than can be accounted for merely by our transition 
from the idea of "justice" to that of "love" in 
eschatology, and our determination to be more re- 
served in definitions of life after death ; but neverthe- 
less, the spell of that wonderful creation of Mediaeval 
thought is so compulsive ! In passing to Goethe's 
Faust from the Divina Commedia we have left a 
world of solutions to enter one of as yet insoluble 
riddles ; a world where one's place is already de- 
termined for better, for worse, or where one has at 
least the assurance of some clay finding it, to enter a 
world where one is tortured in Hell by the hope of its 
temporariness, and in Heaven by the doubt of its 
eternity. 

The purpose of Goethe was the same as that of 
Dante ; to give a map of the river of human destiny 
— to explore if possible its source and tell us some- 
thing of the "engulfing sea!" But Dante accepted 
for every problem substantially the answer of his civi- 
lization verified by his own intense, if limited ex- 
perience. His bold apriorism could content itself 
with scholastic theology and philosophy slightly 
modified, or with Greek ethics, and Roman notions 
of law and government adapted to them. The tra- 
dition was so rich, he never had the time to count it 
out coin by coin and discover its insufficiency to can- 
cel the human mind's irrepudiable debt to Mystery ; it 



16 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

never occurred to him that the coin might not pass 
current. If Goethe did not count out the pieces, with 
which he hoped to brihe away the hordes of devasta- 
ting doubts from the happy plains of human heart-life, 
at all events he tested each coin ere he paid it into 
their hands. Goethe found no answer upon which his 
intelligent contemporaries were unanimously agreed; 
he did not even discover the various suggestions that 
found favor, to be harmonizable. His wary apos- 
teriorism compelled him to procure a theory of life at 
the end of a personal experiment conducted with as 
little prejudice as possible, and therefore at great risk. 
Consequently Dante's work is dramatically solid 
throughout; the outline is decided, often harsh, "for 
he is able to use history (since expressive of the answer 
of his civilization), while Goethe's work, whenever it 
is of general import, becomes vapory, its outline waver- 
ing, history yielding only inadequate materials (as his 
theory was one that had not yet been consciously tested 
by mankind); even myths requiring so much reconstruc- 
tion as to deprive them almost of the power of illusion 
arid appeal to faith, except where they become autobio- 
graphic — his life enlarged to the eye by mountain 
mists. Yet with all deductions duly made (faults in- 
herent in the very prophetic character of the work), 
how marvelous and magical a poem ! How its au- 
dacious anticipations are coming one by one, into the 
field of vision — not all stars of the first magnitude — 
but such stars that one wonders they were not dis- 
cerned before, so sharp and obstinate are their scintil- 
lations as they hang now in ascended Heaven. 

And Gretchen is surely more near to us than 
Dante's Queen of Heaven. Gretchen (as one would 



GRETCHEN OF FAUST. 17 

expect of the Father of evolutionary theory) exhibits 
the power of womanhood, while its character is yet 
incomplete. In the Paradiso we have a finished 
symphony where in Faust we have a wonderful im- 
provisation feeling its way to glory. Gretchen is be- 
coming Mary — she will not surely be content to sit on 
any round below, and treat the gap between as not to 
be crossed without sacrilege; but though as yet so 
many, many rounds below, she has done the work of 
Beatrice, she has called her lover from out the " selva 
Qscara" and brought him to the Blessed Company. 

In the glass (loathing the antics of the witch's 
apes) Faust catches a first rapturous glimpse of what 
can draw him — of what is worth pursuit. " In a 
glass " because our ideals are ghostly doubles, so to 
say, of our possible selves, phantasmal projections of 
what we fain would be, which (their origin in us, 
overlooked or forgotten) take seeming possession of 
some external thing or person, to saturate it for us with a 
weird alien beauty; and thus embodied, to all appear- 
ances, in their own right, they arrogantly demand of 
us (the future substance of which they are mere 
shadows) not devout reverence only, but for their 
sakes, if need be, an absolute self-sacrifice. What a 
blessed illusion is not this! How good that we sep- 
arate our ideals from ourselves, to give ourselves to 
them and so to other selves ! How else could the 
chasm be bridged that islands us — and the old con- 
tinental unity of which Arnold sings reassert itself 
in fact ? 

Was it Helena or Gretchen that Faust saw? 
Enough if we know that it was " das Ewig-weibliche," 
in one of its incarnations, provided we remember that 



18 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

none persists in the world beyond, to meet and com- 
fort him, but that concrete, frail, fallen, and risen 
creature of flesh and blood, whose angelic name is 
not revealed. 

We all know the terrible story. Lust mingles 
with love, adoration becomes sacrilege — the sun is 
eclipsed; then it sets in blood and gloom. And what 
was her fault, poor, foolish girl ? Simply that her love 
was too confiding; that she mistook the idol for the 
God, and directed not through it, her worship, but to 
it! That she could not do enough for -him, who, 
(wrapt solely in self) would do nothing for her ! That 
her childish trust reinforced (not by vanity let us say, 
but) by the intense wish which transmutes for us the 
flimsiest improbabilities into a solid world of facts, 
leads her to suppose that the worship, she ought to 
know goes through her, is to her ! That no warning in- 
tuitions can be heeded because they wear the guise of 
doubt in his worth whom to doubt were sin, though 
they are in fact only a doubt of his self-comprehen- 
sion, of his practical attainment of the self he shall be- 
come, and she prophetically endows him with already. 

But it is now all over. She will not again anti- 
date his perfection; assume in conduct as complete 
what is no more than rudimentary. She will not be 
saved from suffering, but through suffering. She has 
given herself now with the same utter abandonment 
to man's terrible caricature of God's justice with which 
she gave herself before to her lover. She has not ceased 
to love him, only she loves him for God's sake, not 
God for his. "She is judged," says the sneering 
double of Faust; "she is saved," is the word from 
Heaven. 



GRETCHEN OF FAUST. 19 

But Faust is a new man. He will not expiate his 
crime in the old craven fashion. He will atone for it 
by life, not death. Born of love, remorse and pity, a 
new idealizing energy seizes upon Faust. He must 
" strive on and upward to the highest pitch of exis- 
tence" even if " the sun have set forever in his 
rear.'' Scope for his pent energies he must have, 
and, the opportunity presenting itself, power first 
tempts him. Power and wealth attained are dis- 
covered to be mere means. Their end is enjoy- 
ment; the object of enjoyment, Beauty. Art without 
living beauty is mere mimicry and mechanical tradi- 
tion. Down to the world of mysteries, the unsunned 
depths of the soul of man ! Get Helena, for the 
Greeks knew beauty, and in. Helena they found a form 
fit to embody their ideal. But to see Helena is not 
merely to enjoy unmoved, altruistically. No sooner 
has one seen than a mad passion to possess is begot- 
ten. Only after painful journeys through the ideal 
world of dead men recreated in the modern mind (its 
form — the old, its substance — new — mere fancy)— the 
presence of each ghostly inhabitant conclusive proof 
of the potency of studious spells — only in such wise 
can Helena be possessed. But at the touch of sorrow 
all is gone, save the memory of a weird passion — a 
veil, a mantle — things that hid and protected her, now 
flowers whence the perfume soul has flitted, or fossil 
forests that shaded once luxuriantly a world of extinct 
life. And yet this mantle, this veil lifts one above all 
things mean and low. 

Faust has learned in this long search the paradox 
that pleasure must not. be pursued, that perhaps it is 
therefore reasonable to suppose life is for mere life's 



20 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

sake, and pleasure not its end, being only the reward 
of them who seek it, lyy leaving it out of their reck- 
onings. The spirit of beauty was not to be possessed 
by any galvanization of old art to apparent vitality. 
The ideal is a living power; it is felt if not seen. 
The greatest study for man is man. Surely Jules is 
right — 

" Shall to produce from out of unshaped stuff 

Be Art — and further to evoke a soul 

From form be nothing " ? — (Pippa Passes.) 

The greatest opportunity to-day for the idealizing 
faculty is the world of men. Therefore, he first saves 
social order in propping up the tottering throne, and 
then attempts to create social felicity — to free the in- 
dividual from hampering circumstances, to obtain a 
seasonable springtime for the bursting of the blossom 
of humanity. In this his effort, he sins his last great 
sin : sheer reckless impatience in establishing an ideal, 
destroying what should be allowed (since in itself, 
harmless) to die a natural death. He felt sorrow, not 
remorse, for this act which he disowns; his fault 
being not the deed, but the impatient wish that 
wrought it. In this effort he overcomes all selfish 
considerations and has that sudden sense at length of 
what supreme bliss is. 

We know how true is the paradox that rest is 
rust, and yet that work is for repose. Content with 
self is the death of the soul. Oblivion of self (which 
resembles content), in sympathetic consciousness of 
others and their joys, is the soul's most complete life. 
So Mephistopheles thinks he has won his nefarious 
bet. He has not. Angelic roses are sulphurous flames 
to the devils. " Saved is he who never ceases to strive, 



GRETCHEN OF FAUST. 21 

by unseen powers that wait to help ; and if some lov- 
ing soul in the world beyond has felt with him and 
prayed for him, the whole host of the blessed meet 
him with a fervent welcome." 

Then once more is it that we encounter Gretchen, 
but now as the purified soul that caused his welcome. 
Three Maries are close to the Holy Mary, not "five 
sweet symphonies " as in Rosetti's exquisite poem, vir- 
gins of mere untempted chastity, but penitent public 
sinners. They intercede for Gretchen. The Queen is to 
forgive and receive as maid of honor the loving, "the 
gentle soul that forgot her duty only once, nor ever 
dreamed that she was erring then." E~o sooner is 
Gretchen in favor than she sees the lover of her girl- 
hood, and the prayer of her whole being is "grant 
me that I may instruct him, for he is yet blinded, un- 
used to Heaven's new day." She asks to be allowed 
to "go" and "condescend." The answer, as firm as 
it is unexpected: "come" and "ascend!" Follow 
me "to higher spheres!" Inquire not whether he is 
nearing. Make the distance between him and thee 
still greater, and when he grows aware of thy pres- 
ence, like far-off strains of music barely heard, then 
he will reach out after thee and follow !* We feel that, 
so admonished she mounts up — holy incense from the 
censer in which all memories of her bruised and 
broken life are fast consuming. And Faust admitted 
to the society of angels is quickened to new energetic 
effort bv the dawning recognition : — after all the 
power that drew T him and still draws him — known as 



^Substantially Christ's answer to Peter's inquiry about John. 
Jno. xxi., 21. 



22 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

passion, ambition, beauty, patriotism, philanthropy — 
was always one, same spirit affecting him in divers 
ways; it was the love of Gretchen pleading with his 
spirit and changing mask so often to avoid a prema- 
ture discovery, lest he be tempted to worship and 
adore as God, his fellow-servant, his soul's own equal 
love, and fall thus into her sin. 

Ah ! Gretchen has her lesson. The lily is the 
flower of purity, not merely for its almost unbearably 
radiant whiteness, for its penetrating perfume that 
floats upon the air and draws one panting, breathless 
to it ; but because it stands always erect, each cup 
opening heavenward first, then drooping for the en- 
tranced earth to behold its holy secrets, but its stalk 
never bending with the superincumbent load of glory 
except to snap in the violent wind, and fling it in the 
dust. Ah ! there was her mistake on earth. And was 
she not asking saintly Mary to permit her to sin the 
same unconscious sin afresh in heaven ? No, rise ! and 
he will rise. Stoop and he will be content to stay 
below — nay, intoxicated with thy condescending sweet- 
ness he will lose reason and self-mastery, and drag 
thee down to death ! 

Our ideal must be above us, not in station but in 
grace. Should it turn about inquiring if we follow ? 
Are we to be stirred out of our apparent lethargy, our 
ecstasy of aesthetic adoration and achieve some living 
likeness to what we love? Let it rise then out of 
sight, and we will surely soar after, borne upward by 
the quick wingbeats of desire. "All things perishable 
are but a parable ; here the impossible occurs and the 
unspeakable is done," for the ideal, ever living (to man 
in woman's guise) rises persistently, and rising " raises 
us up and on forever." 



browning's pippa. 23 

in. browning's pippa. 

In Goethe's Faust we have the evolution of this 
ideal indicated from without, but only a fragment of 
its transcendental history suggested. We study it 
rather in its various disguises and their particular ef- 
fects, than in its inherent self-accelerative cause-power. 
We do not see in Goethe's Faust how the ideal itself 
is benefited in its inner life, and fulfills its own indi- 
vidual purpose (without regard to what it elevates 
and develops), unless by the acquisition of a new 
motive for self-elevation and self-development, which, 
were such conceptions admissible, might just as well 
be applied directly to any Faust, as to any Margaret. 
It is in Browning that we find, first, the unconscious, 
necessary, God-caused unfolding of the Ideal itself, set 
forth in four stages, pictured as four independent, 
successive incarnations of the same divine woman- 
hood :— Pippa, the unconsciously ministering angel, 
like flow 7 ers in a sick room, lovely and sweet, and 
therefore potent to save ; Pompilia, suffering, she 
knows not wiry, and saving, she know T s not how ; 
James Lee's Wife, known only by her torturer's 
name, suffering and aw^are of the injustice, rebellious 
first and then submissive, being perfected by such suf- 
fering, and willing to be God's instrument, even if he 
use her not for tasks of conscious mercy; and finally, 
the u Lyric Love" dweller in " realms of help," in- 
spirer and blesser of the man she loves, willing to do 
her deeds thro' him now, which all men call his save 
he, and doubtless disclaiming them, to ascribe all the 
glory to Love, the one God, great and good, in both. 

What a foolish work or supererogation to describe 



24 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

at length inimitable descriptions! Let every one go 
and find for himself. Only a few suggestions will be 
offered, hoping the reader will excuse them. The 
writer makes them only lest his own soul misunder- 
stand or fail to appreciate as it ought what Browning 
gives us all to see. 

There are nowadays some who can not believe — 
so much pain and struggle do they see— that God 
every now and then brings souls into the world that 
have no duty but to be like the wayside spring which 
wells up, makes the sunbeams merry in dancing on 
it, ever edged with azure forget-me-nots that speak 
of the unfathomable bine; and the hopeless passer-by 
who meditated crime has his soul filled with " inextin- 
guishable laughter," drinking at this spring oblivion of 
hate, that wonderous intoxicating draught Shelley de- 
scribes as the "bliss"' merely " to move, to breathe, to 
be." Little Pippa in her holiday despair of serving, 
forced to be merely selfish (so she thinks), goes forth 
and sings her faith, " Even I already seem to share in 
God's love." So she does, and infinitely more than she 
knows. Disappointed, of course she is, because God 
will not show her how not simply useful, but indispen- 
sable, she has been ; in fact His very five-fold interposi- 
tion has she been, and once, too, in her own behalf, 
though wholly unaware of danger (the granting she will 
never know of a prayer she never knew she made) ; but 
this Desire to be useful has been enough to make her holi- 
day happy. She meditates : " Ah me ! and my impor- 
tant part with them — This morning's hymn half prom- 
ised when I rose," but with a joyous, instinctive faith in 
God she comments : " True in some sense or other I 
suppose :" — faith that she is useful has made her happy 



POMPILIA. 20 

day holy. Do you suppose that she will pour forth a 
litany at her bedside ? " God bless me, I can pray no 
more to-night:*' — desire, simple, direct, disinterested 
to be blessed hi a usefulness which God only understands, 
and she is willing to accept on trust. And, last of all, 
"Xo doubt some way or other hymns say right — All 
service ranks the same with God :" — -faith, utter, child- 
like, barely conscious that she is actually blessed, though, 
poor, sweet, silly girl she can not know how blessed 
she is ! 

Oh! the delicious self-importance of the child! 
So sure it is welcome, so unaware of rival charms ! 
But here we have what is still lovelier. Instinctive 
self-assertion replaced by modest faith that God will 
speak for her. Is she not in Paradise, the bitter fruit 
untasted ? Does one wonder such a bird escaped the 
fowler's snare from sheer ignorance? Never caught 
sight of the snake's beady eyes, never feared, but sat 
safe all the while on her twig, singing of God's beau- 
tiful world, spreading her little wings — no, not to fly 
(why should she ? is not Heaven where she is?), but to 
quiver for quick joy ? Others, charmed by evil, heard, 
looked up, the spell was snapped, and they flew away, 
nor in their happiness at liberation questioned who she 
was that piped deliverance to their souls ! 

POMPILIA. 

Pompilia! Who shall tell her tale? One line of 
Guido Franceschini, her devilish husband, who having 
outraged, robbed, tortured, slandered, butchered, de- 
famed her in death, to his uttermost, as Jupiter appeals 
from the Judgment of embodied Eternity, to his 
enemies : 



26 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

" Even where he hangs, seared.by my long revenge, 
On Caucasus ! he would not doom me thus !" 

— (Pro. Unb., A. hi., Sc. ii.) 

so be too cries in his first sincerity, elicited by bis 
last despair : 

" Abate! Cardinal! Christ! Maria! God! 
Pompilia, will you let them murder me ? " 

— (Eg. and Bk. xi., p. 457.)* 

To kindle faith in devils by one's meek sufferings 
borne as a testimony not against them, but to them, of 
the infinite goodness of God ! f 

The foul misconstruction of his efforts to save and 
shield her, the Mephistophelian sneers of a secretly 
vicious, semi-ecclesiastical court, can not suppress in 
Giuseppe Caponsacchi his generous enthusiasm for 
her beauty, goodness, meekness, martyrdom. Yes, he 
acknowledges that he might have sought her acquaint- 
ance from most unpriestly passion, for aught that his 
rearing and previous habits could attest, but that the 
authoritative Word that came to him in her presence 
" was God's." " I had been lifted to the level of 
her." (Rg. & Bk. vi., p. 211). " The glory of life, the 
beauty of the world, the splendor of heaven " (p. 191). 
" The perfect soul, Pompilia " (p. 215). He will not 
allow any to think he was "infatuated" (p. 233). 
Judged by strict artistic ideals her features might not 
be perfect; but "the white he saw shine through her 
was her soul's" (p. 214) ; the feeling she inspired has 



^'References by page are to the Eiverside edition (vol. iii). 

t For our slowness to grasp such a doctrine of suffering, com- 
pare Authorized version with Revised version of the New Testa- 
ment in Matt, x., 18; Mk. xiii., 9; Mk. vi., 11; Lk, ix., 5; 
Lk. xxi., 13. 



POMPILIA. 27 

made " duty to God " be " duty to her " (p. 212) ; " it 

is not love," " it is faith" 

" The feeling that there's God, he reigns and rules 
Out of this low world." (p. 216.) 

He who was thus " blessed bj 7 the revelation of 
Porapilia (p. 230), can not concede that he alone is to 
be thus ' lifted to the level of her ;' " he bids his judges 
"be advised," and in her honor "Build churches — go 
pray!" and they may be sure they "will find" him 
"there" (p. 231). That she is dying — dead — he at 
first can not, will not believe. It is a mystery that 
such should agonize, and leave the earth so beyond 
all reckoning poor, to enrich a heaven that needs 
them not. But, 

" Saints to do us good 
Must be in heaven (I seem to understand), 
We never find the in saints before, at least." (p. 193.) 

And, when one thinks of it, she was not in need 
of such discipline (as we are) for her own perfection's 
sake. Why was she ever sent to earth, a lily of heaven 
cast in a hell of mire and fire — if not that : 

"Through such souls alone, 

God stooping, shows sufficient of his light 
For us in the dark to rise by?" (p. 278.) 

" And I rise I" he adds. Pompilia is none other, 
poor girl-wife, girl-mother, that endures torments for 
which she can assign no reason in personal wickedness 
deserving punishment, and which she is too uncon- 
scious of her worth to construe as a precious witness 
borne to truth and purity — she is none other, indeed, 
than that meekness which is strength ; that womanly 
endurance which transmutes man's violent lust into 
courteous love, filling him with an honorable shame ; 



28 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

that womanly innocence which finally insinuates into 
the soul of the very arch-fiend himself such trust and 
love as a discomfited brutality can be made to feel. 

JAMES LEE'S WIFE. 

James Lee's wife, not even a name, much less a 
soul of her own ! The mature, conscious wife, learn- 
ing by the inadequacy of her relations to the man she 
worships, the lesson poor dying Pompilia taught : 

" Marriage on earth seems such a counterfeit, 
Mere imitation of the inimitable, 
In heaven we have the real and true and sure." 

— (Rg. & Bk. vii., p. 218.) 

But there is an advance made in this woman. 

]STot merely because in heaven we shall — 

" Be as the angels rather, who, apart, 
Know themselves into One, are found at length 
Married," —(Id.) 

must we "go up for gain above;" but we are now to 

give ourselves to earth unsparingly : 

" If you loved only what were worth your love, 
Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you ! 
Make the low nature better by your throes !" 

— (J.'s L.'s W. vii., St. 2.) 
We are to — 

"Rejoice that man is hurled 
From change to change unceasingly, 
His soul's wings never furled." — (Id. vii., St. 4.) 

We are to realize how absurd is such a petulant 
demand : 

" I love — shall that be life's strait dole ? 
I must live beloved, or die !" — (Id. viii., St. 3.) 

with absolute self-denial, perceiving that we are not 
worthy of such a boon as a "mutual flame" until 
we are prepared to be burned, mere fuel in a love-fire, 



LYRIC LOYE. 29 

whose purpose it is to warm the hands a moment of 
those who will then look elsewhere for light and heat, 
and leave us to blaze on alone. Then shall we learn 
as did James Lee's wife what an ecstasy there is in 
being loved ; the ecstasy James Lee himself lacks 
wholly, though so rich in what might give it, because 
he only loves his pleasure. She has turned her back 
resolutely on the sun of selfish happiness, and lo ! as 
with Faust, a more glorious orb of selfless bliss rises 
again in the East before her, and "the darkness is in 
her rear;" or more accurately speaking, she seeks for 
light no more, where it is not (without, for self), and 
finds it therefore where it is (within, as God).* 

Is it not as though the soul of Pompilia (who 
after all did find in Caponsacchi a lover "real and 
true and sure,") were sent once more to earth to find, 
this time none to respond, and she were forced, thus, 
"to go up" "above," not for the gain of any human 
companionship to answer her demands, but from des- 
perate desire solely after, the living Love itself, which 
gives and only takes returns to give more plentifully 
still ? 

LYRIC LOYE. 

In the dedication which closes the first book of 
Robert Browning's unique Epic of Monologues, we 
reach, if possible, a greater altitude, breathe a more 
rarified atmosphere, have sensations still more mysti- 
cally soul-sufficient. The lover has passed through 



* Compare Faust's "So bleibe denn die Sonne mir in Rucken " 
with the egotistic claim of Baccalaureus to Mephistopheles " Das 
Helle vor mir, Finsterniss im Rucken," which Faust at length 
realizes when blind to the world without, "Allein im lnneren 
leuchtet helles Licht." 



30 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

the ghastly wilderness of grief. He has made its 
solitudes populous with memories of her. He issues 
now for self-oblivious service to his fellow men — to 
share with them his revelation of her (Rg. & Bk. vi, 
p. 230) which he had when lifted to her level. (Id. 
p. 211.) 

"All a wonder and a wild desire": — She is a 
being compact wholly of rapture in God, and so she is 
to her lover a theophany — imparting her subjective 
rapture to him ; she is a being compact wholh 7 of de- 
sire for the God, whose vision transports her, so trans- 
lating her lover's desire for her into desire for Him. y 
thrilling him with a passion for the Divine. Hence- 
forth his song : 

" My due to God who best taught song by gift of thee " 
can not be without a supplication for soul-com- 
munion with her, that a double portion of her spirit 
should breathe into his work, and make it stand up 
terribly beautiful, a champion of things holy. His 
love to her renders him one with her, " despite the 
distance and the dark;" her love to God renders her 
one with Him, for the removal of her presence would 
"blanch" "the blue" of His abode; and so, the lover, 
through this twofold oneness, while yet on earth, 
whenever he closes his fleshly eyes to the world, an- 
ticipates, nay, presently enjoys the Beatific Vision ; a 
vision Dante had but once, and which to enjoy anew 
he might have to toil up once again the "arduous 
ascent"; a nobler vision, too, be it observed, in that it 
blinds not, but sets gently aglow with qaiet light, such 
as will irradiate from the beholder this dismal world, 
a light of mercy and tenderness, searching out to save 
the infinitesimally small and mean : 



CONCLUSION. 31 

"There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as 
before ; 
The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound ; 
What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more ; 
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round." 

— (Abt Vogler.) 

A vision of omnipotent love that never despairs 
of victory ; that is omniscient in devices to overcome 
in the end evil with good; that will gladly allow, nay 
impose, millions of ages of pain for the ultimate puri- 
fication (voluntary and complete) of the gold from 
dross; who is a fire-— ostensibly wrath — but in very 
truth a manifestation of love especially adapted to the 
wicked and depraved, whom love as love would damn, 
by depriving of external goad to goodness such as 
have not yet the invincible impulse from within. 

This Lyric Love we may invoke to help us, not 
imploring her to stoop (as Gretchen once did, and 
then again asked leave to do), but to be for us a 
chariot of fire with horses of quick fire trampling the 
smoke of sorrows, striking thence sparks of faith, and 
whirling us into the presence of the Light Invisible — 
visible only when refracted by the blessed Company, 
of which She to us is dearest, holiest and most 
beautiful. 

CONCLUSION. 

My task is now accomplished, one imposed on 
myself for my own satisfaction, and executed with 
peculiar delight. 

We hear on all hands alarming rumors of change. 
The long ages of successful male egotism are to be 
avenged. Women are every-where in council as- 
sembled. May there not some day be a new St. 
Bartholomew's, it is whispered ? Oh ! no, sounds the 



32 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

answer: "We shall want them for 'hewers of wood, 
and drawers of water.'" For of course the new 
woman has it in her heart to see the Lord's will exe- 
cuted verbatim literatim: "In the sweat of thy brow 
shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground." 
As for the " butter and honey " which the prophet 
saw "every one eating" that was "left in the midst 
of the land," it shall be reserved for those only who 
are in the curse allowed a more liberal diet — the ladies, 
not the lords of Creation ! 

Nothing odder, it seems to me, could happen than 
this setting of sex against sex. That there is a prob- 
lem none denies. But the first step toward its happy 
solution is the resolve to let bygones be bygones. The 
enmity was to be between the seed of the serpent and 
the seed of the woman ! Besides the "fall," all admit, 
has been quite annulled by a more than compensatory 
" rise," and the language of that much-quoted malison 
reversed long since. Let us have no " female egotism," 
else we shall bemoan the death and burial of the 
"male." After all, male egotism counted itself bound 
to a certain "solemn" bending and "unbending of 
the vertebral column " (to quote Browning's clever 
w T ords) before the shrine of ideal womanhood, and did 
not fail to impose upon itself a certain respect for those 
unassertive members of the " fair " sex who threw 
themselves upon its chivalry for protection. What 
would ensue were female egotism rampant, we can 
only surmise. We fancy that, with traditional per- 
versity, the bold, blatant male would be alloAved to 
fare exceeding well, provided he were bold and 
blatant enough, while the unfortunate who acknowl- 



CONCLUSION. 33 

edged female supremacy would be tenderly assisted in 
perishing " from off the face of the land." 

Yes, there is a problem, of course. But it will be 
solved only by the utter ignoring of it. Not perhaps in 
Tennysonian idyl-fashion, but at all events more ac- 
ceptably, surely more in accord with the ways of the 
world will it be solved — letting sex be no distinction 
between soul and soul, except where it does and must 
count, in courtship and family life, and that larger 
sphere of courtship — society — and that larger family — 
mankind. The free competition of the sexes is im- 
possible. The opponents of the opposite sex will be 
quietly weeded out by the law of matrimonial selec- 
tion from the seed bed of humanity, or thoroughly 
converted by a wholesome bit of romance. So, there 
need be no vaticinal convulsions, no rueful headshakes 
of misgiving, no shudders due to grievous anticipa- 
tion of ills that are so far as we can see unimaginable. 

But is it altogether impossible to view this ques- 
tion judicially? Can not the evidence of sick senti- 
ment be dispensed with once for all ? Can not the 
judge excuse it, and peremptorily, from troubling us 
with its depositions, when it is in such crying need of 
attention at some charity hospital ? Why allow the 
witness of any thing so habitually perjured as senti- 
ment when sick ? Why invite any testimony but that 
of plain, honest, healthy, robust feeling? The advo- 
cates of continued legal and social disabilities for 
women are already defeated. Let no one insult them 
in their last desperate contortions of impotent rage. 
Let them be allowed to vent it in sulphurous language 
if they deem such language medicinal, as waters 
charged with brimstone are believed to be! Was the 



34 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

husband even by St. Paul (poor misunderstood saint!) 
ever declared the "savior of the body"* except thanks 
to our forefathers and a gross piece of mistranslation, 
such as they occasionally winked at in order to pro- 
cure support for a pet heresy? And the thanks here 
adjudged as their due, who is so brave a spendthrift 
of ambiguous praise as to pay, unless some contem- 
porary subduer of many wives in correct conjugal 
succession? The case is clearly a hopeless one, since 
technicalities alone are counted upon to delay our 
judge's decision and jury's verdict. 

Yes, my task is accomplished; simply to trace 
through Dante, Goethe and Browning the growth in 
detiniteness of our ideal of woman ! Suppose, how- 
ever, woman should in her newly-achieved independ- 
ence of thought and feeling evolve an ideal of man ! 
How would not we, misshapen things, hug the dark 
side of the street; — nay in our terror shrink to the 
proper size for quick refuge in mouse holes, not to say 
ant-hills ! Ah ! and what a glorious thing it would be 
if mankind instead of being elevated only by the 
magical power of men's idealizing of women — new 
blood, pearly blood such as Homer's gods had, being 
thus infused, to dilute for the next generation the 
coarser life-liquid in our veins : — if, instead of relying 
on this slow process, we had the power of mutual in- 
dependent idealization at work upon us ! What re- 
sults might we not hope to see in our own day ! 

There is a very simple philosophy involved in the 
redemptive efficacy of idealization which the world wit- 
nesses in every age. Woman, let us say, has been ideal- 

* Eph. v. 23. 



CONCLUSION. 35 

ized by man. She accepts his ideal of her as what ought 
to be. Her love to him, her need of reality compels her 
to become (not by effort of sheer will, but chiefly in a 
quiet, unconscious way) all that this ideal sets before 
her. The man worships his ideal, which he knows is 
not actual in himself, as given " a habitation and a 
name " in her ; and so, worshiping whole-heartedly 
what he now believes to be real, because attached, 
maybe illusively, to her, it comes to be real in him ; 
he is as man bound by the spell which as " dreamer of 
dreams" he cast upon her. 

Why can not the same process, initiated by 
woman, work simultaneously with the one just de- 
scribed ? Has it not already begun ? Long ages in 
the secrecy of home-life and heart-love has it been 
active. But what remains unexpressed in Art's beau- 
tiful form is lacking its chief auxiliary. Let woman 
stop thinking and feeling, and praying holy prayer in 
secret. Let us hear a very certain voice. Let us know 
what it is she wants. Let her create beautiful poems, 
or paintings, or symphonies to suggest it. Let her 
stretch forth her hand with the wand of white magic 
and touch man with it, and this wand of poesy — not 
she — availing itself of natural law, will transmute man 
from copper to gold in more wonderful fashion than 
any alchemist dreamed, peering at sunset over his ap- 
paratus into the western skies. Then lily hood shall 
not be merely feminine any more. Then there shall 
be no choice between sexes of either, God himself 
having finally chosen both. 



36 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 



I. LEOPAEDI AND EVOLUTIONAL PES- 
SIMISM. 

An unshakable confidence in the human mind as 
a trustworthy and adequate instrument for the dis- 
covery of truth must lie, of course, at the basis of 
all valid science and philosophy whatsoever. To at- 
tempt to eliminate every sentiment from our solution 
of the problem presented by the co-existence of our- 
selves and the world of stimuli, has, we feel, been 
futile, as might indeed have been foreseen. The 
validity of our rational nature is no less questionable 
than that of our emotive nature, and it is now clear 
that on!}' their healthy co-operation, for which their 
mutual esteem is indispensable, can bring man to the 
highest and happiest state. 

We owe much to those who in the last three 
centuries have striven to consider the world dispas- 
sionately, and to follow humbly the paths of specula- 
tion indicated by the facts, yjroceeding only so fast as 
the facts seemed to urge. To do this it was necessary 
that the mind should be freed from prepossessions, 
from the powerful bias given it by theories and beliefs 
which had consulted rather the wishes of man than 
his actual experience. It was rightly judged that the 
clue to the external labyrinth must be sought for in 
itself. 

Unfortunately all protestants end in being dog- 
matists quite as thorough-going and intolerant as 
those against whom they protested as tyrannical — if, 



LEOPARDI AND EVOLUTIONAL PESSIMISM. 37 

indeed, not more so. Having won their independ- 
ence, the physical scientists propose now in their turn 
to dictate terms of submission. They abandon their 
original contention. The world was most likely to 
yield its own explanation. The mind of man, how- 
ever, is to find its explanation not in itself, but in an 
alien world of mass and motion ! The tables are 
turned ; the once oppressed becomes oppressor. But 
we fancy that this state can not long continue. If it 
be true, as Mr. Spencer admits, that matter and spirit 
are alike unknowable, not to the advantage of matter; 
and as Mr. Fiske assures us, that what we only 
know immediately and certainly is the self, the per 
son ; then if we are to transcend phenomena at all, 
it would seem that the unknown reality might to 
better advantage be symbolized (felt, perhaps, if not 
thought) as eternal person than as unthinking imper- 
sonal mechanism. 

At all events it is well for us to remember — both 
those who admit and those who do not admit the 
justice of the extravagant claims of some evolu- 
tionists* — that according to their doctrine our facul- 
ties have become what they are by use ; that the 
fashioner of them has been vital necessity. Truth 
then can get no higher authority than Good. That 
is ultimately true to us which to believe true con- 
duces to the preservation of the race, so that the 
question as to the truth of the mechanical theoiw, 



* Since this part of the paper was written the writer has read 
"The Foundation of Belief," by the Rt. Hon. Arthur James 
Balfour (Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1895), and would in 
particular like to call attention to the eloquent paragraph begin- 
ning at the bottom of page 29. ' 



38 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

according to such evolutionists, must be : " does the 
acceptance of it (complete and consistent) tend to in- 
crease the chances for life of social man ? " 

The emotions are the language of value. Nothing 
is for man until it has found its emotional equivalent. 
Good is " good," because it is conceived to bring 
"good." Now, there are certain persistent wants of 
the soul — wants which become acuter with what we 
are pleased to call the progress of civilization. If 
man believed that science must force him to starve 
these wants — that science will arrest his advance by 
bringing about the atrophy of what faculties he most 
prizes in himself — what perverse madness could enlist 
him in its laborious service ? Did he believe Truth to 
be an anthropophagous fiend, would man, could man, 
pursue him to his den with infinite pains? Does not 
Lotze* speak the plain truth when he says : " If the 
object of all human investigation were to produce in 
cognition a reflection of the world as it exists, of 
what value would be all its labor and pains, which 
could result only in vain repetition, in an imitation 
within the soul of that which exists without it? 
What significance could there be in this barren re- 
hearsal ? What should oblige thinking minds to be 
mere mirrors of that which does not think unless the 
discovery of truth were in all cases likewise the 
production of some good, valuable enough to justify 
the pains expended in attaining it? The individual, 



* See page 9 of Author's Introduction to the "Microcosm us: 
an Essay concerning Man and his relation to the World." By 
Hermann Lotze. Translated from the German by Elizabeth 
Hamilton and E. E. Constance Jones ; Scribner & Welford, New 
York, 1888. The italics are not the author's. 



LEOPAKDI AND EVOLUTIONAL PESSIMISM. 39 

ensnared by that division of intellectual labor that 
inevitably results from the widening compass of 
knowledge, may at times forget the connection of his 
narrow sphere of work with the great ends of human 
life ; it may at times seem to him as though the 
furtherance of knowledge for the sake of knowledge 
were an intelligible and worthy aim of human effort. 
But all his endeavors have in the last resort but this 
one meaning, that they, in connection with those of 
countless others, should combine to trace an image 
of the world from which we may learn what we hate 
to reverence as the true significance of existence, what we 
have to do, and what to hope. . . . Whenever any 
scientific revolution has driven out old modes of 
thought, the new views that take their place must 
justify themselves by the permanent or increasing 
satisfaction which they are capable of affording those 
spiritual demands which can not be put off or ignored." 

It is with a more or less conscious sense of this 
need of self-justification that attempts are made every 
now and then to furnish substitutes for old faiths 
which science conceives itself to have made impos- 
sible. One can not but observe that in this field 
of the apologetics of science the commonest and 
most luxuriant growths are equivocations more or less 
subtle. For the great multitudes, life must be mis- 
serable if the race is to go forward ; the comfort 
of the majority can be purchased only at the cost of 
general degeneracy. Men therefore are robbed of any 
ignorant hope of better times in the near future. 
There must of necessity steal over the man, who does 
not take for granted that he is an exception, a sense 
of the questionable worth of life for himself. And 



40 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

if he should conceive himself fortunate, he would, in 
proportion to his nobility, never be able to reconcile 
himself to the failure of so many others. 

The sole purpose of this preliminary discussion 
has been to indicate how little the Evolutional Phi- 
losophy has yet done to justify itself by supplying 
mind and heart with true peace.* Sneers at senti- 
mentality will not answer, for, from its own account 
of the mental faculties of man, has not the very dis- 
tinction between " truth " and ''falsehood" imported 
in the first a power to keep alive? The philosophy 
which shall give its adherents the best chance of 
survival in the struggle for existence is the only 
ultimately true one, since it must eventual^ prevail. 
Is it not fair to ask: Does this Evolutional Phi- 
losophy liberate a current of vitality? Does it, or 
does it not "fit the average man to live?" If this 
question be deemed a fair one, the reader will not feel 
that he is being inopportunely presented with an ac- 
count of Leopard i's poetry. 

For the facts of the poet's pitiful career he may 
be referred to the pleasing essay of Mr. Howells.f 
Still, let it be observed that what seems to the present 
w 7 riter most noteworthy is not that he was diseased 
in body, unfortunate in more respects than one, given 
no scope for his marvelous powers; but that while 



* By Evolutional Philosophy is understood throughout this 
paper all systems that insist on explaining the universe physical 
and spiritual as one continuous growth from one beginning; so 
that mind must look for its credentials to its source — unthinking 
processes. 

t " Modern Italian Poets, Essays and Versions." By W. D. 
Howells. New York. Harper & Bros., 1887. Essay vii., p. 248. 



LEOPARDI AND EVOLUTIONAL PESSIMISM. 41 

many men experience all this more or less, so acute a 
mind as LeopardTs, who anticipated the attitude to 
man of the Evolutional Philosophy, found no con- 
solatory compensations. As a matter of fact the 
instinctive love of life is with most men so strong that 
they find themselves unable to accept practically the 
pessimism which may and does logically follow from 
their philosophy. It hardly seems fair to derive 
Leopardi's pessimism from his misfortunes. Many 
men under circumstances quite as adverse, thanks to 
another theory of life, traditionally or rationally held, 
have been optimists. What makes the case of Leo- 
pardi particularly interesting is that it was apparently 
uncomplicated with moral laxity as that of Heine; 
that the love of life being all but wholly neutralized 
by ever present pain and disappointment, he was able 
to accept entire the practical pessimism of his phi- 
losophy ; that his ingenuous simplicity and directness, 
his artistic desire for the beautiful, tended to make 
him think nobly of man's possibilities ; that he was 
obliged to put the fullest possible strain upon his phi- 
losophy for comfort, since he was deprived of almost 
every other source, except a few devoted friendships ; 
that he was content with no evasions, however spe- 
cious, and demanded either that he should be com- 
fortless, or that his comfort should be consistent with 
his philosophy. 

Of course Leopardi derived his mechanical theory 
of the universe solely from the new astronomy and 
only anticipated the conclusions of biology without 
any knowledge of the argument that has since led up 
to them. The reader will not be surprised to find 
that his poetry does not always put the. case as 



42 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

strongly as one might conceive it to be put to-day. 
Sometimes our poet is irresistibly driven to doubt 
his radical conclusions, when, had he lived later he 
would have felt no scruple. For instance, on one 
occasion he exclaims: "0 Human Nature, if thou 
be altogether frail and vile, dust and shadow, how 
is it thou art capable of such lofty sentiments? 
and if thou be noble in part, how then is it that thy 
worthier impulses and thoughts can be by such slight 
and base causes kindled in turn and quenched?" 
(" Sopra il ritratto di una bella donna," 1. 50.) 

We are convinced, do what we will, that whatever 
ulterior ends may or may not be subserved by our exist- 
ence, it is immediately for our own sakes (the sake of us 
as individuals, or as societies) that we live. And yet 
Leopardi observes " that man is born to burden-bear- 
ing, and birth is danger of death ; his first experience, 
suffering and torture; and from the beginning father 
and mother set about to console him for being born." 
(Canto notturno, 1. 40.) All feel alike the need of hap- 
piness, yet our miseries have the inveterate objectivity 
of the landscape, while our happiness (dubitable ex- 
perience that it is) resembles the varying illumination 
of that landscape. For " all is mysterious except our 
suffering " (Ultimo canto di Saffo, 1. 45), while " de- 
liverance from anguish constitutes for us delight." 
(La quiete clopo la tempesta, 1. 41.) And yet we 
must seek pleasures, of which unconscious quest our 
vital hopefulness is the witness, until it abandons 
us, as we leave youth behind. 

" What boundless thoughts, what dreams ecstatic 
did once the sight inspire of that far sea, of those 
azure hills I hence discern, which some day I then 



LEOPARDI AND EVOLUTIONAL PESSIMISM. 43 

thought to traverse ; imagining worlds beyond them, 
worlds veiled in mystery, in which my life should 
taste mysterious delights." (Le ricordanze, 1. 17.) 
But all such boyish expectations are foredoomed to 
disappointment. " Is this the world, are these the 
pleasures, the love, the achievements, the events of 
which we discoursed so much together? Is this the 
fate of human creatures ?" (A Silvia, 1. 55.) Per- 
sonifying, in spite of himself, he complains, " Oh Na- 
ture, Nature, wherefore dost thou not afterward 
grant what thou then didst promise? Why practice 
such frauds upon thy children ?" (A Silvia, 1. 28.) " It 
pleased thee that our youthful hope should be deluded 
by life; of miseries full is the sea of years ; of ills the 
only end is death." (Sopra un basso rilievo, 1. 59.) 
Ay, as the setting moon that leaves the nightly 
landscape to its mournful monotony, " so youth van- 
ishes, and forsakes mortal life : the shadows are put to 
flight, and all hours of illusive joy ; far away shrink 
hopes, whereon our mortal nature leans, and life is 
left forlorn and in the gloom/' (II Tramonto della 
luna, 1. 20.) To this topic Leopardi reverts so often 
with such pathos that I can not refrain from quoting 
once more : " Hopes, my Hopes, illusions exquisite 
of my first years! Say what I will, I come back at 
length to you. In spite of the lapse of time and all 
change of affections and of thought, I can not forget 
you. Phantasms, I know, are glory and honor ; empty 
self-deceit all pleasures and joys ; and life is without 
fruit — a useless misery. Though so blank my years 
are all, and though so void, obscure, my mortal lot, 
full well I know that fortune robs me but of little. 
Yet, yet at times, I think again of you, my old 



44 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

Hopes; and of those dear first imaginative flights; 
then casting a look on ray abject life so full of pain, 
and seeing that death is all that is now left me of ex- 
pectations once so vast, my heart becomes oppressed, 
and to my fate I can not wholly reconcile myself. 
And when at length this death so much desired shall 
be at hand, and the end has come of my ill destiny, 
when earth shall be to me a valley estranged, and from 
my sight the future will fly, surely memories of you, 
my Hopes, will visit me, and that sweet vision will 
force from me a sigh, will make it bitter to have lived 
in vain, and will mingle a sense of sorrow with the 
delight of dying." (Le ricordanze, 1. 76.) Labor is 
full of desire for rest, and, comparing the destiny of 
man with that of the dumb friends he domesticates 
and tyrannizes over — how strange : " flock of mine, 
taking thy rest, happy, I fancy in that thou art un- 
aware of thy miserable state ! What envy of thee I 
feel, not only because thou dost escape almost all 
sense of trouble, and that wants, hurts, and quick 
fears are at once forgotten as soon as over, but be- 
cause thou feelest no vexed sense of weariness ; while 
if I lie at rest, a feeling of the insipidity of life assails 
me !" (Canto notturno, 1. 105.) " Maybe had I the 
wings wherewith to fly above the clouds, tell the stars 
in turn, or fare from peak to peak as doth the thun- 
der, happier should I be, my dear flock ; happier, 
dear Moon ! Or maybe, my thought forsakes the 
truth when viewing the lot of others ; maybe in all 
forms, in all states, in savage lair or cradle, fraught 
with ill is the day of birth to whosoe'er is born." (id., 
1. 135.) 

Observe as a confirmation of the disappoint- 



LEOPARD! AND EVOLUTIONAL PESSIMISM. 45 

ment commonly experienced in realized rest, that to 
the unsophisticated village folk Saturday, not Sun- 
day, is the day of days. "This of the seven is 
the most delightful day, full of hope and joy: to- 
morrow the idle hours will bring sadness and sensi- 
ble tedium, and to his wonted toil each will, in 
thought, return.'' (Sabato del villaggio, 1. 38.) The 
comforts that men have drawn from the imagination 
are more and more unavailable. " The Truth, so 
soon as it appears, forbids our access to thee, be- 
loved Imagination ; and from thee our mind is being 
forever estranged ; the years undermine thy once stu- 
penduous power; and dead is now the comfort of our 
woes." (Ad Angelo Mai, 1. 100.) At a moment of 
enthusiasm in spring he cries : " lovely Nature, 
hearken the tale of the aching cares, the ignoble doom 
of mortals, and restore to my spirit also the bygone 
fire ; if thou dost indeed live, if aught at all there be 
dwelling in heaven, or on the sunny earth, or in the 
deep sea's bosom, not pitiful, but at least conscious of 
our woes." (Alia primavera, 1. 88.) If nature then 
can be said to have any aims (for aims presuppose 
consciousness, reason, and will) "in all she does, other 
objects than our good or ill hath she" (Sopra on basso 
rilievo, 1. 108), for not of our well being has Xature 
been solicitous, but merely of our being ; she cares for 
nothing else than our preservation, even if she pre- 
serve us unto woe." (II risorgimento, 1. 121.) The per- 
sonification, involved in these apostrophies to nature, 
which in English require the capitalization of the word, 
is evidently but a rhetorical device, a habit surviving 
the modes of thought that originated and justified it. 
There remain only two always accessible sources 



46 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

of joy, and one is the beauty of external nature. Let 
this passage suffice : "At times I ,sit alone upon a 
little hill at the edge of a lake encircled with its crown 
of silent trees. There, when he has reached his noon 
in heaven, the sun paints his own still image, and no 
blade of grass, no leaf ruffles in the wind; the, water 
ripples not, no locust rattles, no bird on bough stirs 
feather, no butterfly flits lightly ; nor sound nor motion, 
nigh or far, is heard or seen. Most absolute peace 
holds all, so that I, sitting motionless, almost forget 
myself and the world about ; already I feel as though 
my body lay at rest, no spirit, no conscious sense stirs 
it any longer, and its antenatal quiet mingles with the 
silence of the scene." (La vita solitaria, 1. 22.) But 
we become, Leopardi notes, less and less sensitive to 
nature's beauty ; for this very appreciation belongs, 
as Wordsworth well perceived, to youth. "Blessed a 
thousand times } is he who loses not with lapse of 
years the fading powers of dear imaginings; to whom 
fate gave the boon of keeping ever fresh his heart's 
flrst youth." (Al conte carlo Pepoli, 1. 110.) For 
himself he anticipates no such unusual good fortune. 
" When this heart shall have grown wholly hard and 
cold, when neither the serene and sunny smile of 
these solitary fields, nor the spring song of birds at 
early morn, nor the dumb moon, under a limpid sky 
o'er hills and vales, shall move me any more ; when 
dead and mute for me both nature's beauty, and art's 
shall have become, and every noble thought, all tender 
affections shall be strange and quite unknown ; then 
seeking my own consolation, I shall elect other pur- 
suits less sweet wherewith to intrust the loathed re- 
mainder of my life." (id., 1. 126.) Evidently, how- 



LE0PARDI AND EVOLUTIONAL PESSIMISM. 47 

ever, the search for speculative truth to which he 
promised final devotion leaves the heart unsatisfied, 
nay, with his point of departure, must end in its bank- 
ruptcy." " Whither are gone our fascinating dreams 
of unknown refuges, of inhabitants unknown, of the 
daily hostelry of the stars, and the remote bed of the 
virgin dawn, and of the nightly sleep of the great 
sun ? Lo, they in one instant were dispelled, and out- 
lined in a small chart lies the world : Lo, all things 
alike ! S"ew discovery extends only the limits of the 
non-existent." (Ad Angelo Mai, 1. 91.) The truth 
which his philosophy sets before him, must be quali- 
fied as " unpropitious," " cruel," " merciless," and 
loyalty to it is a sort of magnanimous fanaticism akin 
to suicide. 

There is one other source of joy always accessible, 
and that is love. " For him who understands love's 
nature, it is a spur to noble deeds." (iSTelle nozze 
della sorella, 1. 45.) But there are the bodily sepa- 
rations, as well as those of the heart. Death steps in 
between lovers, in the end ; and while together, this 
mysterious third is always near. Besides, in his 
poem, "Amore e morte," he sets forth poetically a 
doctrine of the inevitable association of love and 
death. Whenever one feels a great thrill of elevating 
passion, a perfect fearlessness comes over one; indeed, 
a sort of courting of extinction supplants the usual 
love of life. Hence, he would deduce that death is a 
higher destiny. He resolves, " Let me cast away 
every hope with which the world, in children's com- 
pany, finds comfort; nor expect at any time aught 
else but Thee; await serenely that day when I shall 
lay my head to sleep upon thy virgin breast." (1. 117.) 



48 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

And yet he, is sorely perplexed when he contemplates 
his conclusion. Why should death, if the normal end 
and aim of life, be made naturally horrible? "The 
only refuge from ills — death — this inevitable end, this 
law immutable, thou hast set for man's career. Where- 
fore, alas, after aching ways, at least not have ordained 
a pleasing goal ? Instead, why is it that she whom we 
have ever before our souls as a certainty while we live, 
whom thou hast appointed sole comforter of our w T oes, 
is by thee cloaked in black draperies, surrounded with 
shadows so sad? Wherefore have shown us a haven 
more terrible to view than any seas ? " (Sopra un 
basso rilievo, 1. 62.) Besides, we rind ourselves, with 
all our philosophic idolatry of death, unable to wish 
it to others, particularly to the young. " If it be ill 
for the immature to die, wherefore allot it to beings 
innocent? If it be good, wherefore make such de- 
parture seem to him who leaves, and to him who stays 
alive, the most terrible of ills ? " (id., 1. 49.) " If it 
be truth, as I can not but firmly believe, that life is a 
misfortune and death a blessing, yet who can ever 
wish for those he loves (as undoubtedly he ought) that 
their last day would hasten ? " (id., 1. 82.) 

Let us summarize what has been shown in these 
copious excerpts. Life is, for the seekers of pleasure 
at least, predominantly painful. One of the great 
sources of joy, the capacity to imagine and believe 
truth such as we w T ish, is gone. To see purpose in 
nature, is to personify what is, so far as we can tell, 
impersonal. As resulting " from every thing in heaven 
and on earth, whirling without rest, always to return 
thither 'whence it came, I can conceive of no use or 
fruit," (Canto notturno, 1. 94.) Beauty of nature is 



LEOPARDI AND EVOLUTIONAL PESSIMISM. 49 

no permanent consoler, because our sensitiveness to it 
■diminishes with time. Driven inward, we find that 
the indulging of reason to the utmost, ends in the 
sterilization and paralysis of the heart. Love, the 
great source of joy, is made by death in itself uncer- 
tain ; and death is odious for self, piteous in others, 
do what we will. We can not derive any pleasure or 
comfort from a consideration of it as love's inevita- 
ble end. 

Is it strange if, from all this, there should emerge 
a species of Nihilism — for what other name shall be 
given to it? Consciousness is the evil, since its object 
must be always evil. Driven inward and upward by 
the sense of the insufficiency of the world, and the in- 
significance of self, he perceives that it is thought- 
power alone, absorption in an idea that can deliver 
one from this oppressive misery. " What world is it, 
what unexplored immensity, what paradise whither 
this thy miraculous spell oft seems to lift me ? Where, 
w r andering in other than this usual light, my earthly 
state I utterly forget, and the whole body of fact! 
Such are, I must believe, the dreams of the immortals. 
Ah, after all, dear Thought, art thou not for the most 
part a dream w r herewith truth arrays herself for 
beauty's sake? Dream? yea, an evident falsehood! — 
but thou, among delight-giving falsehoods art of di- 
vine nature, since so vital and strong that thou dost 
•obstinately hold thine own against truth, ay, and 
take her place : — nor art thou dispelled, ere in death's 
arms we sleep." (II pensiero dominante, 1. 100.) 

For the complete enjoyment of this refuge from 
reality, this exercise of tyrannous thought-powers, 
the extinction of all emotions and desires is requisite ; 



50 MODEKN POET PROPHETS. 

a scorn of all that seems as if it would still detain the 
soul. " Now, tired heart of mine, rest shalt thou 
have forever. The last illusion, the belief that I am 
deathless, is utterly dead. Well I know that not only 
the hope, hut the desire for all dear deceits is extinct. 
Rest thou forever! Throbbed hast thou over- much. 
Nothing deserves to move thee, nor of thy sigh is the 
earth worthy. Bitterness, tediousness make up our 
life — never aught else, — and the world — mere mire! 
Henceforth be still. Despair thy last. For to our 
race fate gave one only gift — death. Now, therefore, 
scorn at length thyself, nature, the brute Power which 
to the common harm bears occult sway, and of all 
that is the infinite vanity ! " (A se stesso.) 

After such a radical extirpation of the heart's de- 
sires, such a total denial of the ever-living Maya, he 
is well prepared to indulge that great thirst for the 
Absolute, to think on and on till he pass beyond the 
reach of winff-wearv self-consciousness and have 
pierced into a luminous blackness — black for sheer 
excess of light, and "thus, in the midst of this im- 
mensity my thought is drowned, and shipwreck in 
such sea to me is sweet." (L'infinito, 1. 13.) 

I have consciously disregarded every thing like- 
chronological order in these extracts. The poems 
seem to have a central unity — a consistency — that can 
have resulted only from an inveterate hold on one phi- 
losophy. Unless we were definitely informed, it would 
be difficult to decide from internal evidence upon any 
order of composition whatever. In any case Leo- 
pardi's poems are before us and constitute, what is 
certainly rare, a logical whole. 

Leopardi's attitude toward his age does not sur- 



LEOPARDI AND EVOLUTIONAL PESSIMISM. 51 

prise us. I fancy he would have assumed much the 
same attitude toward any age. " The great and rare is 
counted folly," he says to his friend Angel o Mai (1. 145). 
He says to his sister, "We scorn virtue while alive, 
adore her when dead " (ISTelle nozze della sorella, 1. 31). 
He complains " that even the reward of mere glory is de- 
nied to worthy pursuits." Wiser than Mr. Swinburne, 
we think, he dreams of no divine democracy : " Power 
and rule, as much concentrated or as much subdivided 
as may be, whoever is invested with them, under what- 
ever name, will abuse to the end of time." (Palino- 
dia, 1. 78.) 

His views on the reconstruction of ethics and pol- 
itics along scientific lines are all definitely stated in 
" La Ginestra," probably his noblest poem. To com- 
bat the charges brought against his poetry, as poetry, 
seems superfluous. Even his heaviest didactic para- 
graphs are lifted by an eloquent despair, an onrush of 
passion into a domain far removed from that of prose. 
His periods roll on with the fury of a torrent that 
sweeps all before it. The latent agonizing love of 
truth, beauty, goodness; the severity of his mood; 
the sudden illuminative flashes of imagination ; the 
use of nature as a text to every spiritual homily, not 
chosen to fit the homily, but truly the source of it ; all 
this and more would, it seems, set above the reach of 
carping criticism the work of this Italian quite as 
surely as one could wish. The translations in this pa- 
per have been faithful in the main, but of course ut- 
terly inadequately to the purpose (which has not been 
the writer's) of the vindication of Leopardi's poetry, 
as poetry. But, because of the preeminent impor- 
tance of the poem just alluded to above, a version has 



52 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

been made of it, foregoing all attempts at rhyme, and 
simply studying to render, if possible, the sense, giv- 
ing at the same time some impression of the style: its 
inversions, its periodical structure, its sententious con- 
cision, its impressive severity.* 

LA GINESTRA.t 

On the arid shoulder here 

Of the formidable mount 

Vesuvius, fierce destroyer, 

Which else of neither tree is cheered, nor flower, 

Thou scatterest thy solitary shrubs, 

Sweet-smelling Broom, 

Content with wildernesses. Thee I saw 

With thy sprays gracing also the waste lands 

Which girdle the city round 

That once of man was queen, 

And with their staid appearance taciturn 

To the passerby seemed to bear witness 

And make memorial of her empire lost. 

Now once again, lover of sorrowful sites 

Forsaken, of broken fortunes comrade true, 

I view Thee on this soil. These fields 

With ashes unproductive strewn, 

Mantled with indurate lava, 

Under the wanderer's footsteps resonant, 

Where finds the snake his nest 

Aud writhes in the sun, and where returns 



* A version of Leopardi's best poems has been published by 
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1887. Mr. Frederick Townsend, however, 
can not be at all relied upon for the philosophic passages. He 
paraphrases recklessly and often makes sentimental nonsense of 
what in the original is stern sense. Of. To Himself, p. 124, with 
Mr. Ho wells' admirably faithful version in " Modern Italian 
Foets," p. 263. 

t Lest some reader ask himself: " Who is la Ginestra? Some 
famous opera singer?" let me here translate it: " broom, or golden 
furze." 



LEOPARDI AND EVOLUTIONAL PESSIMISM. 53 

The rabbit to his wonted hollow lair, 

Were once blithe rural homes, plowed ground 

Golden with wheat ears, loud 

With lowing of herds; 

Gardens and palaces 

For the great a refuge pleasurable 

Of idle ease; cities far-famed 

Once stood which the fierce mount 

With fiery torrents from his fulminant mouth 

Along with their indwellers whelmed. 

One common desolation all enfolds 

Where thou, gracious Flower, dost stand, 

And sendest, as though of others' ruin piteous, 

To heaven incense of most sweet fragrancy 

The waste wild comforting. These scenes let him 

Visit whose use 'tis to extol 

Our lot with praise; let him take note 

For our race how solicitous 

Fond Nature is ; and the vast might here 

With equitable measure can he mete 

Of that humanity, which, w T ith slight stir 

When danger least is feared, 

A heartless foster-mother in part extirpates, 

And with some motion little less light 

Is able utterly to annihilate. 

In these realms stand depicted 

Of our human generations 

The magnificent progressive destinies! 

Look hither! here glass thyself. 

Arrogant, fatuous Age, 

That didst the path forsake — till then 

By thought reanimate beckoned on — 

And tracing back thy steps 

Dost boast of thy retreat 

Proclaiming it advance ! 

To thy child's play all gifted souls 

Whose hostile fate made thee 

Their parent, tribute of worship pay, 

Tho' at times, among themselves 

They make of thee their jest. 



54 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

Not I shall go down to my grave thus shamed ; 

A light task 'twere for me 

After the rest to pattern, and, 

Raving in manner set, 

Make to thine ear my song acceptable. 

But I choose rather that the full disdain 

Which in my heart is pent 

Have utterance as open as may be. 

Albeit most well I know 

Whoever to his own age proves 

O'ermuch distasteful, soon is quenched 

By dull oblivion ! Of which curse 

That I must share with thee, 

Till now have I made merry ! 

Thou dreamest of freedom still 

And wouldst at the self-same time 

Have Thought be slave again ; — 

To which alone 'tis due if we have risen 

Partly from savagery, with whose sole aid 

Our culture waxes, which conducts alone 

Our public fortunes forth 

To better things. Thus did the truth 

Displease thee, which the bitter lot 

Taught, and the station low 

Assigned to us by Nature ; for this cause 

Basely didst turn thy back 

On the light that made it clear; 

And thou — a runagate — 

Callest him base, who doth pursue 

The light; — and only him great-souled 

Who, flouting himself, or others, fool or knave, 

Above the stars our mortal rank exalts ! 

A man that's destitute, with limbs 

Infirm, — but lofty soul well-bjrn, — 

Nor vaunts, nor fancies himself 

In gold rich, or robust ; 

To opulent living, among the throng, 

And valorous person, makes 

No farcical pretense ; 

But lets, without false shame, appear 



LEOPARDI AND EVOLUTIONAL PESSIMISM. 55 

His lack of strength and wealth ; in open speech 

Of them makes mention, and of his state 

With truth accordant shapes his estimate. 

A foolish creature,— not magnanimous, — 

Do I deem him, who, born 

To perish and in suffering reared, 

Should say " for pleasure was I framed," 

And with offensive arrogance 

Fill volumes ; loftiest destinies 

And novel felicities — 

Whereof not our planet alone 

But the whole heavens know nought, — 

Pledging to a race whom a wave 

Of storm-stirred sea, a breath 

Of air malignant, a subterranean shock, 

So utterly destroys 

That with great difficulty 

Their memory persists. 

A noble nature hath 

Who dares to lift against 

The common doom his mortal eye, 

And with frank phrases, — nought from the truth 

Deducting— the ills that make our fate 

Acknowledges, and our low station frail; 

Who shows himself great, valiant 

In suffering ; nor augments 

With fratricidal hates and wraths 

(Than other ills more grievous) his distress ; 

Nor holds man answerable 

For what he suffers, but assigns 

To Her the blame ; who is indeed 

Guilty :— as to birth mother, but 

In heart, stepmother of mankind! 

Her he calls Foe ; and thinking 

(As is most true) human society 

Originally in martial order drawn 

Her to oppose, confederate he esteems 

All men, encircling them with love sincere; 

Offering, and looking for returns 

Of potent and prompt aid 

In alternate perils, in the pains 



56 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

Of common warfare. His right hand 

To arm against offending fellow-man, 

To fetter his neighbor, or in his path 

Set hindrances, he folly deems: 

As 't would be in a camp 

Besieged by hostile armies when the assault 

Is at its hottest, forgetful of the foe, 

To start a bitter feud among one's friends ; 

To let the sword flash bare, 

Flight-spreading, among one's brothers in arms 

Thoughts such as these 

When they have grown (as once they were) 

Familiar to the masses ; when the fear, 

That first in social ties knit men, 

By veritable science is in part 

Brought back ; then honorable 

And noble citizen-intercourse, 

Equity and sweet mercy, another root 

Will have obtained than fables insolent, 

Founded whereon the popular probity 

Is wont to stand erect as safe 

As can aught that is propped up by a lie. 

Ofttimes o'er these ravaged tracts 

Which the congealed flood cloaks somberly 

Swelling as tho' in billows it did roll, 

I sit me down at night 

And watch the stars, out of the blue 

Of purity absolute on high, 

Dart on the melancholy heath their fires, 

(Which afar off the smooth sea mirroreth); 

And all about, o'er the whole hollow heaven, 

The Universe with sparkles scintillate. 

And when my eyes I raise 

To fix those lights that to their view 

Show as mere dots, yet are so vast 

That measured by them earth and sea 

Are but a dot indeed ; to which 

Not merely man, but this world-globe 

Whereon man is as naught, 

Is utterly unknown ; and when 



LEOPARDI AND EVOLUTIONAL PESSIMISM. 57 

I gaze upon those knots of clustering stars 
Beyond all measure more remote, 
That unto us as mists appear, by which 
Not man, nor the mere earth, but all — 
(For number infinite and for mass — 
Our golden sun included) all the stars 
We see are unsuspected, or appear 
To them, as they to earth : a point 
Of nebulous brilliancy ; — what then 
Seemest thou to my mind, 

child of man ? Remembering, in turn, 
Thy state below, well set forth by the soil 

1 tread ; how nevertheless 
Thou dost believe thyself 

Lord, and appointed End for all that is ! 

How often thou wast pleased to feign 

Upon this obscure grain of sand minute 

Called earth, because of thee 

The Framers of the Universe descended 

Frequent converse pleasurable to hold 

With some of thine ; — and how, renewing 

Such fatuous dreams, insulted are the wise 

Even by this present Age 

Which seems for knowledge to outtop 

And civil manners all times hitherto— 

What feeling then, unhappy mortal race 

What thought of thee at last my heart assails ? 

I know not if contempt or pity 't is prevails ! . 

As from a tree drops a dwarf apple down 

Which toward the Autumn's close 

No other power but its own ripeness flings 

To earth ; and, in its fall, the precious homes 

Of some ant-people, tunneled in soft turf 

At cost of infinite toil, it crushes, depopulates ; 

And the labors, and the ample store 

Assiduously collected by that folk, 

With provident strain, prolonged 

Throughout the summer season, in one instant 

Buries ;— so from the thunderous womb 

Hurled to the heavens profound 



58 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

A night and ruin — compact 

Of ashes, cinders, rocks, with seething streams 

Dilute — that fell as a leaden hail ; — 

Or, a vast flood of bowlders, liquefied 

Metals, and molten sand 

Hissing adown the mountain's grassy flanks, 

Wasted, destroyed, and whelmed 

In a few seconds, the cities which the sea 

Bathed on her farther shore ; 

And here now over them goats browse, 

While cities new rise on the other side, 

For which the buried make 

Foundations firm ; and the steep mount 

Spurns with its trampling foot the prostrate walls. 

Nature nor venerates, nor hath in care 

Man more than ant ; and, if more rare 

Be the slaughter of man than ant 

Unto no other cause 'tis due 

But that less numerous is man's progeny! 

Full eighteen centuries have sped 

Since, by fire's violence oppressed, 

Vanished these populous seats ; but still 

The humble peasant who his vineyard tends, 

Who in these fields with difficulty 

By the dead and cindered soil is fed, 

Lifts a suspicious eye 

Up to the fatal peak, which no whit tamed, 

Yet sits terrific, threatens yet 

Ruin to him, his sons, 

And their scant patrimony. Oftentimes 

The wretch upon the roof 

Of his rustic cot, the whole night long will lie 

Sleepless in the wandering airs; 

And leap up more than once 

The course of the dread seething mass to explore 

That pours adown the sandy back 

Forth from the exhaustless hollow gorge, 

With whose reflected glow 

Gleams the sea beach of Capri, Naples' port, 

And Mergellina. Should he see 



LEOPARDI AND EVOLUTIONAL PESSIMISM. 59 

It drawing nigh, or in the depths 

Of his own well hear the water gurgle hot — 

His sons he rouses, in all haste his wife, 

And fleeing with whatever they can snatch 

Of their poor property, they watch from far 

Their wonted dwelling, and the little field, 

Their sole defense from famine, fall a prey 

To the prowling flood inexorable, 

That crackles as it reaches them, and spreads 

Stiffening forever over all. 

To the rays of heaven is restored, 

After age-long oblivion, dead Pompeii, 

Like an interred skeleton 

By piety or greed exhumed. 

And, from the desolate forum, 

Standing among the files 

Of columns truncated, the traveler 

A long while contemplates 

That mount with its twin peaks, 

The smoking crest that still 

Threatens the scattered ruins. 

And, in the horror of night's secrecy, 

Over the vacant amphitheaters 

And toppled temples and the houses wrecked, 

Where hides the bat her young, 

Like to a dismal torch 

That circles ominously 

Through empty palaces 

The dazzling glare of the funereal lava 

Flies, lurid in the glooms afar, 

And tinges all the landscape round. 

So, ignorant of man, 

Of the stretch of times he ancient deems, 

Of the substitution regular 

Of child for sire — Nature alone 

Stands still in youth, or moves 

Along a road of so great sweep 

That motionless she seems. Meanwhile, 

Fall kingdoms, peoples pass, and tongues 

Whereof no note she takes — 



60 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

But Man, dares arrogate — 

The glory, for himself, of endless days ! 

And thou, slow-flowering Broom 

That with thy perfumed sprays 

Adornest these marred lands, 

Thou, too, soon must succumb 

To the subterranean fires, 

Which visiting once again 

Places familiar grown, 

Will spread out their consuming skirts 

Over thy gentle shrubs: 

And thou wilt bow thine innocent head, 

Not vainly stubborn, under the load of death ; 

Yet not ere then, shall it be bent 

In futile supplication cowardly 

Unto thy future slayer; neither self- lifted 

With insane pride, unto the stars ; 

Nor above the waste — w r here not thy choice 

But fate decreed thee birth and dwelling place ; 

Yet, wiser, yea so much less weak, than man 

In that thou'st not believed thy feeble kind 

Rendered by fate, or thee imperishable ! 

Leopardi's like shall never be again. We are 
sorry, and yet we are glad. Even his natural enemies 
must forgive him for existing, since he is alone of his 
curious class. Most of us feel at least remotely akin 
to him, however, and admire ourselves for our rare, 
not to be duplicated poet-relative. Matthew Arnold 
offers opportunities of clever comparison. So does 
Heine. But Leopardi alone is Leopardi, and if we 
want to embrace all things nobly human, whether 
glad or sad, we shall be obliged to spend a little hour 
of devotion at his private shrine. 



OBERMANX AND MATTHEW ARNOLD. 61 



II. » OBERMAKST," OF SEBTANCOUR, AKD 
MATTHEW ARNOLD; OR, MORALS DI- 
VORCED FROM THEOLOGY* 

Surely no one that knows Matthew Arnold as poet, 
critic, theological amateur, and political freelance can 
accuse him seriously of having drawn his culture exclu- 
sively from one book. Who has oftener emphasized the 
value of wide reading ? And yet there does seem to be 
great truth in the sweeping statement that every man, 
be his reading never so wide, can still point to a half- 
dozen men and books as the fashioners of his essen- 
tial self. There may be many minor influences bear- 
ing with all their vigor upon his sensitive spirit, but 
above them there are some that direct the tendency 
of all; that serve as living centers of assimilation; 
that are the real architects of his genius at large, im- 
posing on all acquired materials an individuality in 
virtue of their new relative worth and office in a vital 
whole. Thus we feel that Sophocles rather than 
.JEschylus was master-poet for Arnold, that Words- 
worth, the placid and passionless, naturally outshone 
in his heaven of art, the electric, impulsive, far- 
sweeping Goethe. 

Every student of Matthew Arnold must have felt 
the sweet necessity of his poetry as a genuine ex- 
pression of soul. Various estimates of his achieve- 



* The translations in the present paper are made from the 
well known edition of Senancour's " Obermann," with a preface 
by George Sand, published by Charpentier, Paris. 



62 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

ment exist, to be sure. Some people prefer his prose 
to his verse, others extol his verse and condone his 
prose. One thing, however, is plain. The critic and 
poet in him are forever inseparable ; different offices 
of one soul. Was not poetry to him creative criti- 
cism of life ? Did he not hold that poetry is the judge 
of civilization, in showing up the eternally beautiful, 
and setting side by side with it, either in the poem it- 
self, or, at least, by suggestion in the mind of the in- 
tent reader, all that in the actual is unlovely, unsound, 
impure, and in need of radical reform — thus censur- 
ing it, shaming it, and imposing upon it the doom of 
the world's eternal scorn? 

This unity of poet and critic can not but have 
suggested to the reader of Arnold the fact that Ober- 
mann, so affectionately praised by him, exercised no 
inconsiderable influence upon the man and the critic, 
because so dear to the poet in youth and mature years. 
It may have been an unconscious infiltration only, 
but it must have been important. Goethe, the critic, 
Wordsworth, the poet, both masters of themselves, 
and kings in divers ways of spiritual calm; Sophocles, 
the Olympian, and Homer, the unspeculatively serene, 
these helped him to attain what he so ardently craved 
of the stars — sublime self-independence, the power to 
do lofty duty without the sympathy of men. But, we 
can be sure — and to us, we dare say, it is comforting — 
this attainment was like that of Paracelsus, illusory. 
He who brought, at a decisive hour, this sympathy, 
who soothed his fever of bitter unrest, was Obermann, 
not they. Sainte Beuve may have been his master in 
criticism, but Obermann was an intimate, a brother in 
youth, a second, sweeter, never-forgotten self. 



OBERMANN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD. 63 

The present paper is not intended to be a dog- 
matic restatement, in perpetually varied terms, of the 
opinion that Senancour had a great share in the mak- 
ing of our poet and critic. It attempts a more mod- 
est but far more arduous task. In a series of selected 
morsels of Obermann, translated to give the intimate 
sense rather than to render the expression, this paper 
will attempt to furnish those who have not the op- 
portunity, or leisure, of obtaining it for themselves, 
some evidence of the affinity we venture to affirm, and 
of the influence we would suggest as probable. We 
will not weary the reader with continual quotations 
from Arnold, or with repeated flashes of generaliza- 
tion more or less brilliant. On the whole, we shall 
confine ourselves to Senancour and his marvelous 
Obermann. 

As the reader is doubtless aware, the object of 
our present scrutiny is a collection of letters purport- 
ing to be those of a spirit astray, perplexed, but fully 
conscious of high capability and mission, to a friend, 
practical, happy in his home, genially conservative in 
faith and opinion. Such a collection of letters can 
not, of course, pursue one line of thought persistently ; 
the two characteristic topics of the book are con- 
stantly interwoven. These we must artificially sepa- 
rate, so far as possible, to make them clear at the 
first glance, reminding the reader, however, that we 
are examining Obermann for evidence of his kinship 
with Arnold, and not attempting to criticize Senan- 
cour's work for its own sake. We should other- 
wise have to dwell on the grace and witchery of the 
style, the sweet suddenness of transition from nature 
to man and from man to nature ; we should have to 



64 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

reprehend all its didactic digressions as artistic blun- 
ders, as plains of prose among the highlands of poetry 
and sentiment, On the contrary, from these very di- 
gressions we shall have to draw largely, while what 
is best in the work must be dismissed with a few quo- 
tations at the close of our paper. 

Obermann then deals with two great subjects ; the 
considerations of practical ethics and the need of their 
reconstruction occupy his mind; his soul is engaged 
with the emanations of beauty from nature, those se- 
cret suggestions, not mechanically allegorical, but 
direct interferences with the spirit of man, experienced 
in the midst of mountains and valleys, forests, birds, 
and waters, and under the eternal sky. And so we find 
constant efforts at evolving some theory of the moral 
regeneration of mankind, which has become impera- 
tive because of the inroad made upon tradition by 
science and the spirit of individual liberty. We have 
equally, frequent hints how to obtain the comfort of 
ever-present nature, not seen through frigid mytholog- 
ical media, but felt as a portion of ourselves, bone of 
our bone, flesh of our flesh, spirit of our spirit — twin 
births, man and nature — the conscious and uncon- 
scious — of the same universal mother. Both these 
phases of the work might be separately found else- 
where, but their fusion, so intimate and significant, is 
what constitutes Obermann's originality of attitude, 
and makes one feel that Arnold, whose life-work was 
also the manifestation and advocacy of these two 
phases of spiritual activity — (the one in his rational- 
ized theology, the other in his literary essays, and both 
in his poetry — natural magic and moral profundity 
being always what he strove to enshrine in classic 



OBERMANN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD. 65 

verse) — bears to Obermaun a striking likeness, not 
so much of feature as of expression. 

To go honestly to work, let us, momentarily at 
least, forget all bias for or against Arnold, the teacher 
— to some an apostle, to some an apostate and per- 
verter. We must remember, whatever our feelings, 
that he was in earnest, a seeker after the highest wel- 
fare of man ; and that, on the other hand, like all 
men, even his virulent detractors, he was fallible, and, 
unlike many of them, well aware of his extreme hu- 
man fallibility of mind and heart. 

Wordsworth was the apostle of nature, and found 
in his mission all felicity. Not so Arnold : 

Never by passion quite possessed, 

And never quite benumbed by the world's sway. 

Like Senancour, he sought sympathy and serene self- 
possession which were evereluding his eagergrasp. He 
had not taken the last step in buddhistic self-renunci- 
ation. He still desired Nirvana, and this one desire 
perturbed and tortured him, itself the obstacle in the 
way of its owui realization : 

Ye who from my childhood up have calm'd me, 
Calm me, ah, compose me to the end ! 

Let us compare further the last wish of Obermaun 
with that of Arnold, to dispel what doubt remains : 

" If I should attain to advanced age ; if some clay, 
still active in thought, all converse with man fore- 
gone, I have a friend by my side to receive my last 
farewell to earth, let my chair be set on the short 
grass, and let there be in front of me those quiet 
daisies, under the sun, under the immense heaven, so 
that, as I leave the life that perishes, I may find once 
more something of the old infinite illusion." 



66 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

Here follow Arnold's words : 

but let me be, 

While all around in silence lies, 
Moved to the window near, and see 
Once more, before my dying eyes, 

Bathed in the sacred dews of morn 
The wide aerial landscape spread — 

The world which was ere I was born, 

The world which lasts when I am dead ; . . . . 

Thus feeling, gazing, might I grow 
Composed, refresh'd, ennobled, clear; 

Then willing let my spirit go 

To work or wait elsewhere or here ! 

Oberniann had lost his belief in a mechanical 
providence. He was perplexed, as the Psalmist of 
old, that in the world virtue seems so often to suffer; 
that, to quote his own words, at times, " even states 
perish for having failed to commit a crime." A world 
full of injustice, where crime does not bring punish- 
ment as surely as a violation of mechanical law, made 
him feel that spirit and matter are not in harmony, 
that spirit with its needs, is a solitary outcast in a uni- 
verse which knows nothing of right and wrong. The 
dogmatic theorist who solves every difficulty so con- 
sistently and with such complacent assurance, revolts 
him utterly. " Whoever is in such startling accord 
with himself is either not sincere, or a dupe of his 
own system. He is playing a part." Theorists of 
« vigor and rigor " did not impose on him. He affirms 
the existence of practical dualism — believing a reso- 
lution of this dualism to be only possible to man illu- 
sively, each successive illusion having its own brief 
term. So he turns toman. Since nature does not re- 



OBERMANN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD. 67 

ward virtue, as such, nor punish vice, as such, there 
must he error in our conceptions of right and wrong, 
or their reward and punishment are to be sought in 
man, instead of in the outer world. Hence he first 
tries to give himself an account of what is not tradi- 
tionally, but naturally right and wrong. And then 
perceiving that even now, with all corrections duly 
made, there is no certainty of justice in external life, 
he affirms that virtue is not a more or less painful 
means to the attainment of a hypothetical joy-giving 
end ; that this has been an old, pernicious mistake to 
which is due very much of our despondency and, there- 
fore, not a little of our depravity. On the contrary, virtue 
is itself, the end of a natural prepotent passion in men 
for righteousness, and, since an end per se, has a right 
to be considered a good without reference to any re- 
ward it may bring besides. Indeed, all goods result- 
ing secondarily from virtue as a means, are secondary, 
adventitious, and would not be eagerly expected if 
men were normal and weighed probabilities without 
prejudice. To teach men not to count upon such ac- 
cidental rewards of righteousness would greatly en- 
hance their felicity. For if these secondary goods 
were not much sought, their partial presence or their 
absence would no longer produce a sense of disap- 
pointment and unfair treatment, which, reacting on 
the moral sense, so often tends to weaken the impulse 
to virtue in the unfortunate, because virtue conies to 
be regarded as lacking all natural sanctions and, 
therefore, as not endowed with the obligatoriness of 
law. Now religion, to be sure, has done its best to 
make men look for no rewards as due to right doing in 
this life — but it has promised them in another. And 



58 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

the mistake has been to appeal to the imagination for 
rewards, instead of making virtue appear itself a good 
highly desirable, a noble reward of life-long effort. 
Attention should have beeu drawn to the fact of its 
fulfilling an eternal and supreme human want. An 
after-life has been imagined of adequate reward and 
punishment. If this was once a help to morals, we 
can state that it is becoming less potent as a motive 
for conduct, since mankind at large trusts the human 
imagination less and less, and actual coguition more 
and more. Besides, this method of immortal rewards 
and punishments is fatal to the dignity of virtue, de- 
grading it to the rank of a means; furthermore, it 
vitiates the very essence of virtue itself. If good or 
evil lies in the motive of an act — as Jesus of Nazareth 
taught — then virtue for the sake of beatitude is not 
virtuous; it is selfish, grasping; egotism postponed to 
an imaginary hereafter; to use Matthew Arnold's ex- 
cellent expression, it is not disinterested righteousness, 
but " other-wordliness." 

Now Senancour continues to argue that in the 
downfall of false theologies there will be a breaking 
of barriers in morals, and a destructive flood of vice. 
This is to be avoided only by a timely divorce of ethics 
and superstition which shall leave the latter to its fate, 
proving morality to be quite independent of external 
stimulus, — since it has an internal motive force of its 
own, and at no time requires the mechanical, super- 
cilious aid of the mythopoeic faculty. Thus the 
preacher's duty is not to preach a heaven and a hell in 
some doubtful hereafter, but to stir to conscious life 
the dormant craving for righteousness, to herald an 
actual this-life heaven of virtue ; the supreme attain- 



OBERMANN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD. 69 

ment of the supreme end, which being within reach, 
independent of the unmoral world of mechanism, is 
positive, certain, practical, cognizable, and worth all 
peril and strain. In the stimulation of this passion 
for " order,'' or righteousness, lies the mission of the 
reformer, because in the dominance of his passion — 
with its satisfaction dependent only on the will of the 
individual — lies the secret of self-mastery, content- 
ment, and peace. 

On the other hand in nature we have an external 
pattern and guide, a repertory of maxims, a world of 
suggestion, a consoler in these times of transition from 
the old to the new morality : 

Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain ! 

Clearness divine ! 

Ye heavens . . . remain 

A world above man's head to let him see 

How fair a lot to fill 
Is left to each man still. 

Let the lover of poetry pardon this garbling of 
the sublime close of Arnold's " Summer Xio-ht." 
Such is the significance of nature to Obermann — a 
feeder of the heart, a constant supplier of beautiful 
illusions to the effect that man (the moral being), and 
nature (the mechanical concourse of things), are some- 
how secretly in harmony, meaning in different words 
the same glorious thing, nature being full of man, in 
proportion as man at large becomes natural. But this 
becoming natural — one of the most constant thoughts 
of both Senancour and Arnold — can be understood in 
two distinct ways, as a recessional movement toward 
what man was before Christianity, and as a forward 
impulse in the direction of what man is to become 



70 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

when, having outgrown accepted partial intepretations 
of Christ's message, he conforms more fully to the 
ideal presented by the ISTew Testament to such as have 
open, spiritual eyes. Arnold could not, of course, with 
his sentiment of culture and history, hold the former 
of these views, which Senancour took from Rousseau 
and his own time. Herein lies their chief difference. 
Senancour's attitude is destructive, Arnold's recon- 
structive and progressive. 

Obermann, however, does not approve of an as- 
cetic withdrawal from society because it is not accord- 
ing to nature; such a withdrawal is itself unnatural. 

"An isolated being is never perfect; his existence 
is incomplete ; he is in truth neither happy nor good." 
(p. 275.) 

Yet he perceives quite clearly the independence 
of man from society in the deeper sense. 

"The real life of man is in himself; what -comes 
to him from without is adventitious only, and second- 
ary. The effect of things upon him depends far more 
upon the state in wmich they find him, than on their 
intrinsic nature. . . . Therefore at each and every 
moment of his life, what concerns a man supremely is 
to be what he should be." (p. 25.) 

This importance of the moral man as the antago- 
nist of fate is emphasized again and again. 

" In things, we may be sure, no peace is to be 
found; let us look for it in our hearts. . . . Force 
is nature's law ; will is the pow T er of powers ; energy 
in suffering is better than apathy in voluptuous de- 
light. What we fear is vanity, what we desire is also 
vain. One thing only will be permanently good for 
us, to be what nature meant us to become." (p. 116.) 



OBERMANN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD. 71 

!Now, according to Obermann, it is the province 
of ethical science to find just what is the intention of 
nature in respect to man ; hence its paramount im- 
portance among sciences. 

" Since man is of little significance in nature, while 
to himself he is every thing, he ought to busy himself 
somewhat less with the laws of the world, and some- 
what more with those of his own being ; ignore per- 
haps such sciences as are unpractical nor have ever 
dried a single tear in hamlet and in hovel; ignore cer- 
tain arts, maybe, admirable in themselves, but of no 
service; deny himself all passions, heroic, no doubt, 
but fatal ; and strive instead, if it be possible, to estab- 
lish institutions which restrain mankind yet cease to 
degrade him ; to have less learning and less ignorance ; 
and finally, if man is no mere blind center of reaction- 
ary energy which should be abandoned to the forces 
of destiny, if his conduct can be said to be in any 
sense free, proclaim at large that morals constitute the 
only science for man in the hands of human provi- 
dence." (p. 198.) 

But together with this plea for the study of 
ethics, goes another for its purgation from traditional 
casuistry, and for bringing it nearer to its data : 

" There is for us no other moral law than that 
of the heart of man, no other science or other wisdom 
than acquaintance with its needs, and a just estimate 
of the respective means to happiness. Turn away 
from useless science, supernatural systems, mystifying 
dogmas. Leave what is remote to superior or differ- 
ently constituted intelligences ; what the intellect can 
not clearly discern, was not intended for its scrutiny." 
(p. 117.) " 



72 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

The latter portion we understand in a relative 
sense only. He means no more than that a reason- 
able preference should be given to what is clearly seen 
over what can, at best, be surmised, and is, therefore, 
open to incalculable errors. 

The consideration of the all-importance of ethics 
suggests, quite inevitably, a comparison of morality 
with religion, of the science of right and wrong and 
the disinterested art of doing right, with a system of 
beliefs which imposes indirectly a certain order of 
conduct : 

" Morality, well understood by all, would make 
men very righteous, and, therefore, very kindly and 
very happy. Religion, which is a less reasoned 
morality, depending less on proof, appealing less to 
the immediate reasons of things, emphasized, enforced 
by divine sanctions — religion, if well understood, 
would make men perfectly pure." (p. 237.) 

It is, then, according to Obermann, not merely a 
question as to whether ethics, or what he calls reli- 
gion, is easier to understand properly, but there is 
also a decided difference in results. The direct method 
produces an active, consciously attained righteousness, 
as a consequence of which we should have, thinks he, all 
kindliness and happiness, strength out of which should 
proceed sweetness ; by the emotional method of indi- 
rect attainment we have purity — absence of wrong — 
not necessarily vigor of character. Still, with this 
clear preference for the results attained by intelligent 
moral effort, he does not fail to recognize the worth 
of religion : 

" I do not like to have men show intolerance 
against religion any more than in its favor. I approve 



OBERMANN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD. 73 

of its pronounced opponents as little as of its fanatic 
furtherers." (p. 230.) 

And lest he should in any way be supposed to im- 
ply, in severe censure of false religion, any sympathy 
with iconoclastic aggressors upon Christianity, he re- 
turns to the subject several times : 

"I admire religion when it is what it should be. 
I admire it as a great work. I dislike to have men, 
who rebel against religions, deny their beauty, failing 
to recognize or actually disowning the good those re- 
ligions were intended to accomplish. These men are 
wrong. Good which has been done is less good, for- 
sooth, because done in a manner not agreeable to their 
theory ! It is well enough to seek means of doing 
better with less; but let all acknowledge the good 
which has been accomplished, for, after all, even when 
the worst has been said, a great deal of it has been 
done." (p. 237.) 

" So far am I from cherishing a prejudice against 
Christianity, that I deplore, in a certain sense, what 
most of its zealots themselves hardly dream of de- 
ploring. I should gladly join them in lamenting the 
doom of Christianity, with this difference, however, 
between us, that they would wish back its imperfect 
realization in the form even in which it existed a cen- 
tury ago, while I do not believe that the loss of such 
a Christianity is to be deplored." (p. 190.) 

As Senancour wrote in the tirst quarter of this 
century, we can readily perceive what sort of Chris- 
tianity he had in mind. He is, however, of those who 
sincerely regret their loss of hold on the faith of their 
youth. It is to him — as the promised land to Moses — 



74 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

a forbidden but beautiful country whither his soul may 
fly, but where his feet can never stand. 

"Religion gives a goal, which, as it is never at- 
tained, is never unveiled ; it subjects us, to set us at 
peace with ourselves. ... It sets aside the idea 
of our insignificance ; it removes the violent passions 
from life; it rids us of our desperate evils and 
our transient goods, in place of which it gives us 
a dream, the hope of whose realization — better per- 
haps than all real goods — endures at least till death. . 
. . But it rests on dogmas which some can not be- 
lieve ; some who, anxious for its effects, can not ex- 
perience them, who regret its shelter but can never en- 
joy its security." (p. 180.) 

The plea that dogmas can be incomprehensible 
and yet credible, because there is mystery in nature, 
he meets with the following observation : 

" There is indeed a difference between acknowl- 
edging that there are things incomprehensible to man, 
and affirming that an inconceivable hypothesis in re- 
spect to these things is true and infallible." (p. 186.) 

The old prudential argument of the unthinking 
adherents of religion — voiced by no less considerable 
a thinker than Pascal — he answers as it well deserves : 

"Believe because you run no risk by belief and run a 
great risk by disbelief, is an argument conclusive in mat- 
ters of conduct; it is absurd, if what is demanded is 
faith. When was belief ever dependent upon the bare 
exercise of will?" (p. 182.) 

The question then obtrudes itself, whether or not 
a man is justified in preaching independence from es- 
tablished modes of belief: 

" If men were never to be undeceived, nor ever 



0BERMANN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD. 75 

could be, the question remaining for decision would 
be whether the general good can give the right to ut- 
ter falsehood, and w r hether or not it is a crime, or, at 
least, a wrong, to speak the truth, which contradicts 
it. But if this useful error — or rather this error 
which has been declared useful — can have a limited 
term only ; if it be inevitable that some clay credence 
will not be given on bare assertion, are we not com- 
pelled to conclude that all our moral edifice will be 
without means of support when this brilliant scaf- 
folding has crumbled? By employing easier and 
speedier means of rendering the present secure, we 
expose the future to what may prove, perhaps, an ir- 
reparable overthrow. If, on the contrary, we had 
known how to discover in the human heart the eter- 
nal foundations of its morality ; if we had known 
how to add what might possibly be wanting in our so- 
cial organization and our city institutions ; our labors, 
wdiile, to be sure, more arduous and scientific, would 
have been as lasting as the world." (p. 184.) 

" The world begins to want certainties, and to 
perceive positive facts; morals are undergoing change, 
and faith is no more ; we must hasten, then, to prove to 
mankind that quite independently of a future life, 
their hearts have need of righteousness ; that even for 
the individual there is no happiness without reason- 
ableness, and that virtues are laws of nature quite as 
indispensable to social man as the laws of physical 
want." (p. 184.) 

"I should never wish to rob of any notion what- 
soever a head already empty enough to say, ' Were 
there no hell, where would be the use of being right- 
eous ?' It may happen, however, that what I write 



76 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

might be read by such a man ; but it may also hap- 
pen that I should diminish the number of those good 
souls who believe in duty only because they believe in 
hell. Perhaps I may succeed in making the notion 
of duty persist, when the fashion for relics and horned 
devils has quite passed. 

" It is unavoidable that even the masses should 
come to scorn more or less, and certainly at no very 
remote period, one of these two notions which they 
have been most imprudently taught to receive only 
together. We have, then, to prove to their satisfac- 
tion that these notions can very well exist apart, that 
the consignment to oblivion in the case of one does 
not carry with it the subversion of the other. 

"I believe this hour to be fast approaching. It 
will be more generally seen that we should not lay 
on what is transient the foundations of that moral 
refuge, banished from which we should be living in 
continuous secret warfare, in the midst of perfidies 
more odious than the acts of vengeance and the pro- 
tracted hates of savage hordes." (p. 370.) 

From these rather copious extracts the reader can 
see how plain to Senancour seems the downfall of popu- 
lar thaumaturgical Christianity. He does not believe 
merely that a divorce between religion and ethics is 
likely, but also that it is much to be desired for the 
greater permanent security and beneficence of the latter. 

" Morality would greatly gain if it waived the 
support of a foredoomed fanaticism, in order to base 
its majesty on unimpeachable evidence. Do you want 
principles that speak to the heart? Summon, then, 
once more to your aid those principles that are in the 
heart of every well-organized man." (p. 143.) 



OBERMANN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD. 77 

Where religion touches morality is, according to 
• Senancour, chiefly in its doctrine of an after-existence 
of just rewards and punishments. Now, he holds 
that on one hand, this after-existence, in the literal 
sense, is problematic, and, therefore, only a restraint 
of a precarious sort, while on the other hand it actively 
vitiates virtue. Instead of immortality, he points out 
the true source of morality in man — a faculty akin to 
his sense of the proportionate in the realm of form, the 
harmonious in the domain of sound — an ethical in- 
stinct quite as real as man's aesthetic instinct, which 
requires no artificial stimulation from belief in heaven 
and hell. 

Let us now retrace the thought of Obermann as 
summarized in the preceding paragraph, through a 
brief series of quotations : 

" Is it not a notable fact that the terrors of an 
after-life have been a check to very few of those who 
were likely to be held back by nothing else ? For the 
remainder of mankind, there are more natural, more 
direct, and, therefore, also more potent restraints. 
Since, once for all, man was endowed with a sense for 
order, since it forms a part of his nature, the need of 
it should have been made a conscious one in every 
individual. Thus there would have been left fewer 
villains than your dogmas leave, and we should have 
been spared all those they create." (p. 187.) 

The idea of immortality he regards as one easily 
accounted for, and of suspicious origin — at least not 
one to be trusted for much practical service among 
enlightened men. 

" Very restless, and more or less unhappy, we are 
always looking forward to the following hour, the 



78 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

next day, the years to come. We end by requiring 
an after-life as well. We have existed without living ; 
some day, therefore, we shall live — a conclusion more 
agreeable than logical. If it is a consolation to the 
unhappy, we have one good reason the more for sus- 
pecting its validity." (p. 183.) 

Besides, continual reference to an after-life in- 
sensibly lowers our conception of morals : 

" In our habit of connecting everv magnanimous 
impulse, every honest and pure thought, exclusively 
with our hope of immortality, there always lurks the 
implication that all is vile which is not supernatural ; 
that whatsoever fails of transporting a man in ecstaey 
to the abodes of bliss, must necessarily lower him to 
the level of the brute ; that earthly virtues are misera- 
ble hypocrisy; and that a soul restricted to this pres- 
ent life in its hopes, has only infamous desires and 
impure thoughts." (p. 188.) 

Yet Senancour is not perverse enough to scorn 
the pathetic human desire for an eternal life. 

" While the idea of immortality has every mark 
of a beautiful dream, that of annihilation can not be 
rigorously proved. The noble man must always de- 
sire that he may not perish altogether. Is not this 
enough to serve him as support ? And besides, if to 
be righteous the hope of an after-life were needed, this 
shadowy possibility would suffice. But it is superflu- 
ous for him who leads a life according to reason. 
There persists in the present a want of being righteous." 
(p. 189.) ' 

A real belief in immortal rewards and punish- 
ments as a certainty would remove all choice of a 
reasonable sort; we should have virtue produced un- 



OBERMANN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD. 79 

der compulson, and " coercion of every nature has 
harmful consequences and only temporary results; the 
time is fast coming when w T e shall have resort to per- 
suasion." (p. 190.) 

Should it be asked what is the practical use of 
virtue if we perish utterly at death, he will answer 
" self-respect, while we live." 

u Man is perishable ? It may be so, but let us 
perish fighting; and if annihilation be our doom, let 
us see to it that it be not our desert." (p. 412.) 

Besides, the notion of the shortness of life would 
stimulate, so Obermann thinks, the moral life : 

" To realize in silence that to-morrow every thing 
on earth may be over for us, means at the same time to 
appreciate with a firmer look what has been clone and 
what must yet be clone with the gifts of life." (p. 
410.) 

In any case, Obermann persists in reiterating in 
different words the question : 

" Is not the tendency to order as esseutially a part 
of our bent, of our instinct, as the tendency to self- 
preservation, or to the reproduction of the species ?" 
(Quoted in George Sand's Preface.) 

But there is another great harm which Obermann 
ascribes to the association of religion with morals. By 
supplying conduct with artificial stimulus and direc- 
tion men are not taught the " wherefore," but simply 
the fact. Certain acts of an external sort are dogmatic- 
ally branded, and certain words of hideous association 
come to be dreaded. The criminality is not the thing 
dreaded. The name and ill fame are alone of real im- 
portance. 

" It is a fatal mistake to lav too much stress on 



80 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

words and exterior acts; by this means, a familiarity 
gained, possibly in some legitimate way, with these 
ghosts of evil, might suffice to strip of all importance 
the evil itself." (p. 234.) 

In consequence, since certain acts committed 
constitute depravity, while the actual guilt is never 
even measured, many come to prize themselves hypo- 
critically as saints, because they have neither the fac- 
ulties nor the opportunities for committing definite 
heinous acts. 

"A wisdom contrary to natural order is a strange 
kind of wisdom. Every faculty, every energy is a 
perfection. It is a glorious thing to be stronger than 
one's passions ; but it is sheer stupidity to pride one's 
self on the silence of the senses and of the heart; it 
is as though one should believe one's self more per- 
fect from the very fact which makes one less capable 
of becoming perfect." (p. 279.) 

But the most serious flaw of our moral teaching 
under the amiable patronage of religious hierarchies 
is a preference for what is difficult, as though diffi- 
culty was a mark of excellence. According to this 
the man whose nature happens to be inclined to the 
good should force himself to attain evil! Acts should 
not be praised for the mere sake of their impractica- 
bility and quixotism. If, now, morals were put on 
their natural basis, with their own normal criteria and 
motive energies, far better results would surely be 
achieved than at present. 

"If the rules of morality preached to the people 
were true, consistent, and never strained ; if the rea- 
son for each duty were shown, and a due proportion 
observed; if they had reference only to their actual 



OBERMANN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD. 81 

-ends, we should have nothing left to do but to hold in 
•check a handful of men whose ill-organized brains 
had no sense for righteousness." (p. 240.) 

But now let us see just what Senancour believes 
to be the natural criterion of right and wrong : 

" All is good, when intelligence directs it; evil, 
when unruled by reason. Make use of the body's 
goods, while ordering them with foresight. A pleas- 
ure enjoyed in harmony with universal nature, is 
[morally] better than an unnatural privation; and the 
most unmeritorious act of our lives is less evil than 
the strain imposed upon us by those aimless virtues 
which serve only to retard our growth in wisdom." 
{p. 116.) 

" Every end of a natural desire is legitimate, and 
all the means it suggests are good, provided they in- 
fringe on the right of no one, and produce in our- 
selves no real disorder which counterbalances their 
usefulness. But duties have been too much stretched. 
In order to obtain enough, more than enough has 
been demanded. And this has been a mistake. Ask 
too much of men, and they rebeL If they are ex- 
pected to exhibit chimerical virtues, they will ; they 
declare that it costs them but little trouble. But for 
the very reason that this virtuousness does not pro- 
ceed from their nature, thev will indulge in secret 
conduct quite contrary to it; and because of the 
secrecy of this conduct, there will be no means of put- 
ting c\ check to its excesses." (p. 282.) 

Against the common doctrine that in proportion 
to the unnaturalness and painfuluess of an act is it 
meritorious, he speaks very distinctly : 

" Permit, authorize pleasures, so that virtue may 



SZ MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

exist; demonstrate the reasonableness of the laws, so 
that they may be revered. Invite to enjoyment, so 
that yon be listened to when you enjoin suffering. 
Lift up the soul by the sense of natural delights; you 
will thus render it stronger and greater, to respect 
legitimate privations, and it will even revel in them 
when thoroughly convinced of their social utility.'- 
(p. 287.) 

But from much that he has said, Obermann fears 
that he will be mistaken for a utilitarian, for a man 
who cynically scorns all efforts after the attainment 
of ideals : 

" Can it be asserted that one ought to stop short 
of ideal beauty, of absolute happiness, and limit one's 
self to considerations of immediate use in the actual 
order of things? Because perfection is unattainable 
for every man, especially for mankind as a whole,? 
shall we say that it is both unserviceable and foolishly 
futile to talk to them of such matters ! Why, is not 
nature herself forever preparing the more that she 
may secure the less f Of a thousand seeds only one 
will spring. We should want to see what is the best 
conceivable, not merely in the hope of reaching \t y 
but with a view to a closer approach than if we held 
out to ourselves, as the ultimate end of efforts, what 
they can in very deed attain." (p. 201.) 

But there is a vast difference between striving 
after absolute perfection and a perverse preference 
for the difficult and painful in conduct ! Still, 
the greatest fruit of the divorce of ethics and re- 
ligious matters is to be found in the quality of our 
morality. 

" When it lies in our power to do good, let us da 



OBERMANN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD. 55 

it for its own sake; and if our lot sets brilliant actions 
beyond reach, let us not neglect, at all events, what 
glory fails to reward. Let us leave uncertainties out 
of the question, and be good in our obscurity. There 
ure plenty of men to seek fame for its own sake, and 
thereby to furnish what may, perhaps, be regarded as 
a necessary impetus to a great state ; for our part, let 
us strive only to do what ought to deserve fame, and 
let us be indifferent to the whims of fate, that grants 
it often to success and denies it sometimes to heroism, 
and so rarely awards it to the pure in heart." (p. 
243.) 

Finally, before closing this series of extracts con- 
cerned with Senancour's doctrine of the divorce of 
of religion and ethics, let us see his vision of his true 
priest of morals — a vision destined to find its fulfill- 
ment in the career of Arnold : 

" If there were righteous men, lovers of order by 
nature, whose first personal want was to bring men- 
back to more unanimity, more conformity, and more 
joy ; if, leaving to one side as doubtful whatever has 
never been proved, they impressed on men's minds 
the principles of righteousness and universal love 
which no one could confute; if they ventured to 
speak of those unerring paths of bliss ; if carried 
aw^ay by the truth they felt, they saw, which the lis- 
tener, too, could not but perceive, they w T ere to conse- 
crate their lives to proclaiming it in different ways, 
and to create conviction by repetition. . . ." (p. 
185.) 

Are we wrong in crying, " Matthew Arnold ? " 

It is time now to turn our attention to the second 



84 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

great subject of Obermarm — the vanity of individual 
life and the consolation to be drawn from nature. 

" Seen from above, what is the worth of things 
from which our last breath will separate us?" (p. 
411.) 

"For us, who are individuals, those laws for the 
whole, that care for the species, this contempt of the 
individual, this march of creation, are very hard to bear. 
I admire the providence which labors on a vast scale; 
but see how man is pitched among the rubbish I 
What folly to fancy we are something! Gods in our 
thought, insects as to happiness, we are like the Jupiter 
whose temple is in Bedlam : his bowl of soup brought 
into his ceil, he mistakes for a censer, and he sits en- 
throned upon Olympus till the vilest of jailors recalls 
him to the world of fact by a blow, to kiss the hand 
that struck, and moisten his moldy bread with tears." 
(p. 194.) 

But this searing sadness does not annihilate for 
him the moral man : 

" Granted that all is foreordained, it is also fore- 
ordained that I should behave as though there were 
no predestination." (p. 200.) 

Besides, our insignificance is also a source of self- 
esteem : 

"A transitory incident : I was — I shall cease to 
be ! It is with a sense of awe that I discover that my 
thoughts are vaster than my being." (p. 86.) 

" To give over all the faculties of life to mere 
pleasure is to give one's self up to eternal death " (p. 
411), for joys are disappointing, and "in human suf- 
ferings, at all events, we get a taste of that infinity, 
with which we would gladly endow our being before 



0BERMANN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD. 85 

it be diffused by a puff of time." (p. 83.) Further- 
more, " to suffer and to be unhappy, are not one and 
the same thing," and so he cries, " I do not want to 
enjoy; I want to hope. I should wish to know. I 
feel the need of limitless illusions, that withdraw to 
deceive me again. Of what interest to me is what has 
an end?" (p. 85.) And again, in a moment of soul- 
dominion, he gives us this prayer: "Sad and vain 
conception of a better world ! Inexpressible overflow 
of love? Sorrow, rather, art thou for the time that 
runs on uselessly ! passion for the world's weal, 
sustain, consume my life ! What were it without thy 
sinister beauty ? It is in thee that life is felt, it is 
through thee that it shall perish." (p. 77.) 

Thinking of those who regard happiness as so 
readily attainable, " What a soul," he cries, indig- 
nantly, "have those people then been given, who 
know of no greater misery than to suffer hunger?" 
(p. 76.) 

The one great torture of life is the inadequacy 
of its opportunities for the full play of the soul's 
powers : 

" I know of nothing which so fills life with wea- 
riness as this perpetual drawl of things. It keeps 
ns ever in a state of expectancy, until our life is over 
before we have reached the point where we intended 
to begin it." (p. 68.) 

Again and again we have the same complaint. 

'•Man, whose greatest unhappiness would be in- 
capacity for suffering; whom obstacles incite, and 
pleasures overwhelm; who grows in love with repose, 
only when he has forfeited it; who, borne on cease- 
lessly from illusion to illusion, does not and can not 



8b MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

possess any thing else but illusions, and never does 
more than dream of living." (p. 330.) 

Since things are thus, he becomes perplexed. 
What does he wish ? To be undeceived ? "I want 
no more desires — they do not delude me. I do not 
want them extinguished — that absolute vacancy would 
be more terrible still." 

And yet, again, Obermann draws a strange, sadly- 
sweet honey of self-esteem out of this bitter perplexity 
and disappointment : 

" We do suffer because we are not what we have 
it in us to become; but were we in the midst of that 
world of opportunities by which we wish we were sur- 
rounded, we should not then have any more this ex- 
cess of appetites, this superabundance of powers; we 
should no longer experience the delight of being 
superior to our destiny, greater and more creative than 
our environment requires." (p. 79.) 

Still he cries: " My heart craves all, wants all, 
contains all ! What shall I substitute for that infinite 
which my soul demands?" (p. 186.) 

And how does he answer this question? Shall it 
be learning? Hear how he speaks of those eternal 
hungerers after recondite erudition : 

"I can see those wavering spirits acquire infor- 
mation in solitude or content, while the oblivion of 
eternity is about to roll over their sapient spell-bound 
brains its wave of inevitable death, and, in one moment 
of nature's sway, annul their being and their thoughts, 
as well as their whole age." (p. 69.) 

It is to the illusive consolations of nature that he 
turns, to her eternal allegories, sympathies, witcheries 
of beauty and delight. Let us here remember Arnold's 



OBERMANN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD. 87 

usual manner of closing a poem of spiritual struggle, 
and also keep in mind what he has said of the future of 
poetry in the beautiful essay prefixed to Ward's great 
representative anthology. 

" Can you understand the pleasure I feel when 
my foot sinks in soft burning sands, when I push on 
with difficulty, and find no water, no cool, no shade? 
Before me unplowed spaces without a sound; ruin- 
ous rocks, stripped bare and shattered ; the forces of 
nature overcome by the power of time ! Is it not as 
though I were at peace, when I see about me, under 
a burning sky, other barriers and abuses than those of 
my own heart?" (p. 74.) 

We shall now translate three extracts in which he 
will show us how nature satisfied his thirst for the 
unreachable. Of course, it is only the spirit immanent 
in these that we would have the reader compare with 
that of Matthew Arnold's poems. It is not an in- 
debtedness in particular instances of Arnold to Senan- 
cour that we hope to establish ; it is to a kinship that 
we would call attention — a kinship of spirit. Here, 
first, we have Obermann in rural surroundings : 

" Since they were meant to yield a choicer wine, 
we decided at supper that these grapes should be 
gathered with our own hands only, selecting first the 
ripest, leaving a few days more to those that should 
yet need to mature. On the morrow, as soon as the 
mists had somewhat thinned, I put my basket on a 
barrow, and was the first to reach the end of the in- 
closure and begin the vintage. I was engaged in it 
almost single handed, nor did I try to find more ex- 
peditious means. I enjoyed the very slowness, and 
was sorry to see any one else at work. The vintage 



88 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

lasted some twelve clays. My barrow came and went 
along neglected paths rank with wet grass; I would 
purposely select the roughest and steepest, and so the 
days ran on insensibly, in the midst of mist and fruit 
and autumn sun. At dusk we poured our tea in milk 
yet warm, laughed at men who hunt for pleasures 
abroad, walked through the old hedged arbors, and 
went to rest content. I have seen the pomps of life, 
and in my heart there still burns the germ of vaster 
passions. I feel there also the sense for the great want 
of social life, the delight in philosophic order. Mar- 
cus Aurelius I have read, but he caused me no sur- 
prise. I can imagine all strained virtues, even the 
extreme heroism of a monastic life. All that can 
quicken my soul, but does not fill it. This barrow I 
load with grapes and gently push in front of me sus- 
tains it better. It seems to be quietly wheeling my 
hours along ; I feel as though these slow and useful 
movements, this measured pace, were suited to the 
usual ebb and flow of life." (p. 66.) 

Once more let us listen to Obermann, now in 
the city : 

" It was dark and somewhat chill. I was in low 
spirits, and walked because I could do nothing better. 
I passed along a wall just high enough to lean on, 
near some flowers planted there. One daffodil in 
blossom! The most potent expression of yearning, 
the first perfume of the year ! I felt in myself all the 
bliss destined for mankind. The indescribable har- 
mony of all beings, the phantom of the ideal world en- 
tirely possessed me: never did I experience any thing 
so great, so sudden. How t can I discover what form, 
what analogy, what hidden tie made me see in that 



OBERMANN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD. 89 

flower a beauty without all limits; the expression, the 
grace, the attitude of a woman, happy and artless, in 
the full loveliness and splendor of her springtide of 
love? Never, do what I may, shall I be able to un- 
derstand that power — that intensity nothing can con- 
vey ; that form nothing can embody; that conscious- 
ness we feel of a better world, which yet seems left 
by nature uncreated; that gleam of heaven we think 
we seize, which inspires with passion, transports us, 
yet is only an indiscernible, wandering, homeless 
ghost, whose haunt is the abyss of gloom. But this 
shadowy dream, this image beautifully vague, en- 
dowed with all the potency of the unknown, grown 
needful to us in our miseries, and natural to our op- 
pressed hearts — where is the man who having caught 
but a glimpse of it, could ever forget it again ? When 
the resistance, the opposition of a dead, brutal, hideous 
power trammels us, surrounds us, presses hard upon 
us, holds us down in doubt, disgust, and puerile de- 
tails, stupid and cruel absurdities; when sure of 
nothing, possessed of nothing, all passes before our 
eyes like the eccentric creatures of some odious, farci- 
cal nightmare; who will keep down in our hearts the 
want of another order of things, of another nature?" 
(p. 110.) 

Let us close with a note of peace : 

"The nightingale from time to time threw into 
that expectant silence her solitary notes, single and 
reiterated; that song of blissful nights, the sublime 
utterance of a primitive melody; the unspeakable up- 
ward leap of love and agony; voluptuous as the need 
that consumes my life; simple, full of mystery, limit- 
less as the heart that loves." (p. 278.) 



90 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 



III. AGNOSTIC POETS OF OUR DAY. 

1. England's agnostic poets. 

I believe there is do charge an educated person of 
our days more bitterly resents than that of supersti- 
tion or credulity. Who of us, at all events, must not 
confess to a little uneasiness should he chance to find 
himself believing very much that so many extremely 
clever persons declare they have quite outgrown? 

The old arguments for our cherished tenets are 
being of course re-edited and reprinted with en- 
couraging energy. Nor is there wanting among the 
younger divines something that resembles a spirit of 
enterprise. The faces of all are not turned to the past. 
But the question that concerns us most is not how T 
many volumes of apologetic literature, old and new, 
are annually issued, and how many edified readers 
they can boast ; it is whether or not the many stout 
intellects in the van-guard of scientific progress, that 
are well disposed, anxious to uplift and spiritualize 
the race, but devoid of such definite religious convic- 
tions as have hitherto always been requisite for mov- 
ing the masses to any great extent — whether or not 
this relatively small but actually large and very pre- 
cious section of civilized humanity is being converted 
to what we deem the truth at any rate which keeps 
pace with their natural increase? 

" Our religion has materialized itself in the fact, 
in the supposed fact; it has attached its emotion to 
the fact, and now the fact is failing it. But for poetry 



England's agnostic poets. 91 

the idea is every thing; the rest is a world of illusion, 
of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the 
idea ; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our 
religion to-day is its unconscious poetry." * 

We may or may not assent to this criticism. We 
may or may not approve of this contrast between re- 
ligion and poetry. We may regard it as merely a 
rhetorical opposition. We may indeed go on and 
state that emotion can not well be attached to any 
idea without just this very materialization in supposed 
facts ; that even poetry always takes facts from his- 
tory or makes them out of facts taken ; and that 
while we are enjoying the poetry, our emotions are 
successfully attached to the idea just in proportion 
to our acceptance of these probably fictitious objects 
and events as actual. The more substantial we take the 
symbol to be, the more real will that which it sym- 
bolizes appear. But, whatever our opinion as to the 
fitness of poetry for replacing religion and philoso- 
phy — when in all experience it has been poetry which 
has mothered them, they replacing her as more defi- 
nite and certain, more fit to rule the unaesthetic 
many — we must agree with Mr. Arnold's negative 
statement that "there is not a creed which is not 
shaken, not an accredited dosmia which is not shown 
to be questionable, not a received tradition which 
does not threaten to dissolve." 

And the first paragraphs of the late Thomas Hill 
Green's Introduction to his Prolegomena to Ethics 
are calculated to raise the question : Why is that 
"welcomed by reflecting men as expressing deep con- 



Matthew Arnold's Essav on Poetrv 



92 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

victions of their own" when " presented in the rapt 
unreasoned form of poetic utterance," which theolog- 
ically or philosophically stated, they are disposed to 
repudiate before it has been granted so much as a 
hearing? Surely men have not come to distrust the 
Reason? Surely it is not because the theologian and 
philosopher insist on systemizing an array of facts 
(at which the poet only casts a random glance), and 
strive to make their resulting statements cohere with 
the general body of our knowledge? Is it not be- 
cause the poet arrogates to himself no right to speak 
for any except such as sympathize with him ; because 
he does not attempt to give the appearance of com- 
pleteness to a fragment, or the name of dogma or 
inevitable conclusion to a guess ; because, in Mr. 
Green's words, the poet does not profess to do more 
than represent a mood of his own soul, leaving us to 
attribute to the mood itself what value we feel it 
rightly claims? 

It is not, then, that acute close reasoning consci- 
entiously conducted arouses suspicion, but that w r e 
are not satisfied with the premises whereto the logical 
chain is attached, and while we are disposed to believe 
the substance of the conclusion, we are not able to ac- 
cept it as a cogently proved proposition. 

Transcendental subjects, which by the very use 
of symbolism in our deliverances about them we 
clearly confess to be altogether outside the domain of 
accurate knowledge and direct statement, have been 
foolhardily invaded by lovers of definite opinions. A 
word applicable purely by way of metaphor, tenta- 
tively and for its power of suggestion singled out by 
some master-writer on spiritual themes, is taken to be 



England's agnostic poets. 93 

descriptive — exactly, definitely, exhaustively expres- 
sive — in touch with its object at every point of its 
manifold meaning. Tangential contact, so to speak, 
which the prophet and poet asserted, is by the 
theologian treated as though it were the coincidence 
of two circles with the same center and a radius of 
equal length! Thus resemblance passes for identity. 
Logic is then called in to perform a pitiable duty. 
With juggler's ease one can now argue back from the 
partially known fact to the familiar symbol, and forth 
from it again to unexplored regions of fact, which sort 
of argumentation is described as a series of successful 
voyages of discovery. Fly-specks on my map of 
Africa are great cities in the wilderness, which I can 
magnanimously christen after my friends., What an 
honor to stand sponsor for some metropolis which no 
explorer has yet been able to discover! So the 
Arians of old, for instance, argued that there was a 
time when the Eternal Son was not, because forsooth, 
a human father must pre-exist all offspring ! 

Such childish mistaking of symbolic suggestion 
for complete definition has vitiated so much theology, 
not to say philosophy and science, that a belligerent 
iconoclastic agnosticism has good work to do in the 
cause of truth. Of all theologians, those of Christen- 
dom are surely most to blame for such pretended om- 
niscience, whose religious books extol u faith " so much, 
and give it its proper dignity as man's only guide 
in regions which present sight is unable to penetrate.* 

The Christ spake to Xicodemus what he knew; 



2 Co. v., 7 ; Ro. viii., 24 ; 1 Co. xiii., 1 



94 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

and a " Verily, verily," * claimed for him often enough 
a first-hand intuitive acquaintance with the matters 
of which he treated; the disciples, in the main, how- 
ever, were forced to content themselves with speaking 
what they believed on the strength of their master's 
assertion that he knew. Coupled with "truth," we 
do not find the word "logic," but the word "spirit" 
or " life." Religious truth in fact, according to the 
New Testament, denotes something of which life, not 
argument, is the test. The creed is verifiable in deed. 
The tree is to be judged not from its consistent sym- 
metry, but from its fruit. 

By religious beliefs we mean, then, or ought 
to mean, convictions concerning "man," his life, 
and the universe, which are not speculative and 
disinterested, but of such a nature as to modify con- 
duct and affect our capacity for happiness. St. Paul 
goes so far as to contrast "faith" and "sight;" to 
view them as incompatible; he values "sight" beyond 
" faith" where sight is possible ; but faith is exercised 
in matters so much nobler than such as admit of 
present " sight," that to man his little guess is often 
worth to him far more than his most varied assort- 
ment of slowly accumulated certainties. When I say r 
"I believe God is good," I mean that I stake my life 
on the assumption, although without doubt it is alto- 
gether beyond the range of what we mean by abstract 
demonstration. When I have lived my life out con- 
sistently with this proposition, and have cause to be 
satisfied with the results, I can then declare that I 
have proved it true for me. When all men have done 



St. J. iii., 11-13. 



England's agnostic poets. 95 

the same, it can be said to be proved for mankind. 
Till then it must be not a matter of experimental 
knowledge, nor assuredly of rational certainty, but of 
" faith." 

We have been told that the business of science 
is simply to classify facts after repeated experiments. 
That no facts should ever be assumed to be facts, no 
matter how much we are tempted to do so, in order to 
render our classification neater and more symmetrical. 
We have heard so much of this that we have come to 
assume it as a good piece of practicable doctrine. We 
fancy that the physical scientists have abided by this 
golden rule ; that they never do any thing so perni- 
cious and vicious as to speculate, imagine, believe. 
Now, a moment's sober reflection shows us that men 
are so constituted as never to rest content till they 
have a theory that marshals in one army the multi- 
tude of observed facts. Our experiences must be 
grouped in an intelligible order. Where none is dis- 
cernible, is it not legitimate to avoid intellectual con- 
fusion by the assumption of some unobserved fact 
which, were it a fact, would satisfy our demand for 
reasonableness in the world? In view of our limited 
knowledge, is such an assumption not justifiable 
when our knowledge has been made to reach its ut- 
most limit? And even before, is not the pressure ex- 
ercised by the immediate necessity of living now forcing 
us to adopt provisionally explanations, though we are 
morally certain they will sooner or later have to be 
set aside ? 

And so it is that " reflecting men " do " welcome " 
the " ' breath and finer spirit of knowledge ' offered to 



96 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

us by poetry,"* and if they refuse to listen to the 
theologian and philosopher, it is not because they 
object to the application of methods of close reason- 
ing, of literary and historic verification, to the "be- 
liefs " or " guesses " on which we stake our lives 
sooner or later, but because they shrewdly suspect 
that these methods have been grossly misapplied; or 
because they insist on most fanatically capitulating to 
the common foe of man's felicity without condition, 
when they could so easily have dictated the terms of 
their surrender. For, to treat as purely illusory the 
presumptions required for the explanation of man's 
higher life, and yet to treat as practical certainties 
those which are an interpretation (at bottom always 
subtly anthropomorphic) of external phenomena, ap- 
pears unpardonable inconsistency. Why should " the 
truth which we feel" j be any less reliable (provided 
we do feel it always under given conditions) than the 
truth we profess to think? 

We can not afford in science to let willful ag- 
nosticism obstruct the path to further knowledge. 
Working hypotheses blaze a wa} r for us into the 
woods, which many travelers will ultimately tramp 
into a mud road, called a theory, and civilization in 
due time macadamize and dignify with the name of 
"law." Even then it may some time be abandoned 
by the traffic of thought. Because we do not know 
that is no proof we can not. Because some particular 
" guess " does not harmonize with other "guesses," that 
is no reason it should not some day harmonize with 



■ ;: " Matthew Arnold's Essay on Poetry 
t Green's Prolegomena, pp. 2-3. 



England's agnostic poets. 97 

these guesses modified, or with guesses which will 
supersede, them. 

The geologist works on. The chemist does not 
lose heart. The archeologist and historian are full of 
€Ourage. Why then should the student of religious 
phenomena despair ? Someday the lines may meet. 
At all events it is too soon for the defenders of re- 
ligious truths to retreat, though, doubtless, they will 
have to abandon all their stately stone fortresses, and 
erect earth -works better fitted to resist the modern 
artillery of doubt. 

The " application of ideas to life " is the province 
of poetry we are told. The application of ideas to 
man's higher life is that of religion. Their work is 
the same only the province of poetry is wider. But 
the theologian professes to reduce to order, to in- 
vestigate the implications of those various ideas, and 
discover the further assumptions requisite to organize 
them. Because the work can not be done once for all 
with any degree of certainty, shall he lay aside his 
tools, stretch himself full length on the ground, face 
downward, and give up the ghost? Does he avail 
himself of past literature ? Shall he stop doing so 
because mechanical critics of that literature fly at 
each other's throats about [questions that can not 
affect the value of that literature as literature, as a 
reliable product of the sane human spirit, witnessing 
to its normal needs, to its primary convictions, to its 
difficulties in applying them, to its rare but most 
precious successes? 

Let us consider briefly our present life. So far 
as we know we did not ask to live. True, but here 
we are. What have we so far found life to be? Is it 



98 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

wholly satisfactory ? What do the great majority of 
men and women think of it? Have they no com- 
plaints to make? I am not allowing, of course, for 
the compensations of any life or lives beyond this 
present one, nor am I asking you to imagine what 
life would be under non-actual conditions. Begin- 
ning with childhood and all its aches, stretching 
on to death through a helpless, maybe imbecile, old 
age, with privations, disappointments, bereavements, 
occasional satisfactions and usual discontents or sa- 
tiations and disgusts, between beginning and end — is 
this present life such as we should choose to live for 
its own sake ? 

It is a question which we shrink from meeting. 
We always try to evade it. We strike out to right or 
left along the first convenient by-way that promises 
to hide us from it in a forest tangle of metaphysical 
speculations, or in high meadow grasses of poetry 
where butterfly hopes flutter from fancy-flower to 
fancy-flower, quite oblivious of their previous ugly 
caterpillar stage as memories! And yet in serious 
hours we find no happy by-ways, and must bravely 
face the question. Now 7 the consentient judgment 
of the most distinguished minds of the past is well 
known. Either they declare that this life is on the 
whole for the great majority of men quite unsatis- 
factory, or they say it is satisfactory in view of certain 
transcendental compensations. Unsatisfactory in it- 
self now, it is not so with reference to what will 
result of it — another imagined life or lives. Unsatis- 
factory for me now as an individual, or for us as a 
society, it is not so with reference to what it will be to 
other individuals in a better societv. 



England's agnostic poets. 99 

And here, of course, we have evaded the plain 
question. Transcendental optimists by the energy 
with which they construct and then exhibit their 
beautiful cities of sunrise-clouds, testify as strongly, 
if not more strongly, than do the avowed pessimists 
to the unsatisfactoriness of life, in and of itself, for all 
but some fortunate few. The witness of Job and 
Solomon, of Isaiah and Jeremiah, is not stronger than 
that of St. John and St. Paul; that of Plato, Zeno, 
Spinoza, and Hegel, not less loud than that of 
Schopenhauer. Browning's witness is, if any thing, 
more emphatic than Ibsen's, Goethe's than Heine's. 
Notwithstanding, the great masses live on, and it is 
said that they do so from sheer inertia. They have 
begun and can not stop. At all events, they are 
afraid to stop. Perhaps stopping, for aught they 
know, is worse than going on. So Hamlet feared. 
The mere brute instinct of self-preservation propels 
them. The childish hope that to-morrow may per- 
haps be better than to-day encourages them. 

Of course, there are not wanting those who ob- 
ject to the witness of the past. They assert that we 
only get the testimony of men of genius or of ex- 
traordinary talent. That the vast multitude of con- 
tented common-sense folk who have been on this 
^arth before us, have lived and/ejoiced in having made 
history, not written it, and can not, therefore, be con- 
sulted. Confessed!}? - , men of genius or great talent 
are exceptional — men possibly misdeveloped or dis- 
eased. Furthermore, they bid us observe that we 
ourselves incline to a pessimistic view most frequently 
when we are conscious of feebleness, failure, extreme 



100 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

poverty, disease, and that in proportion to our general 
health, strength, wealth, and success does a more 
cheerful view preponderate. All pessimism, there- 
fore, we may set down as morbid. The judgment of 
the man at his best (as we say) is alone trustworthy. 

However, in spite of this plausible plea, even if 
it should be urged by some sensational charlatan be- 
yond seas, who has been translated — not like Enoch 
because God took him, but because it paid booksellers 
in hard cash — we may have to accept the witness of 
men of genius and extraordinary talent. And for 
these reasons : 

First, be it observed, the contented masses are 
made up of just those people who most unquestiona- 
bly accept, when in need of comfort or encourage- 
ment, drippings from buts * of stored up Transcen- 
dentalism. It is they who are always pleased to view 
this life in the light of happy fictions. So their wit- 
ness is not to life in and of itself. They probably 
have not enough intellectual discipline to segregate 
facts from fancies, and so to report on the mere facts. 

Second, when we are most healthy, strong, pros- 
perous, and successful, we are most inclined to let the 
animal in us prevail. When aw^are of feebleness, fail- 
ure, poverty, disease, the higher faculties, those most 
characteristically human, as a rule, are brought into 
requisition. Our optimism of the healthy, muscular, 
prosperous, and successful sort, has usually very little 
to do with, any thing else than bodily functions, bodily 
satisfactions, or personal vanity. Pessimism, on the 



* Cf. Browning's Epilogue to Pacchiarotto. 



England's agnostic poets. 101 

contrary, is loudest of lung when adverse fortunes 
force a man to try the things of the soul, weigh 
them, and find them in and for this life decidedly 

wanting : 

" In man there 's failure only since he left 
The lower and inconscious forms of life ; 
Most progress is most failure." * 

Now, what escape is there from the conclusion 
that life is for the average man (if he only knew it!) 
not worth living? Why, of course, every religion 
furnishes an escape, every transcendental philosophy 
attempts to do so. But Mr. Arnold, and many also 
who think quite differently from him, will not be sat- 
isfied with any escape furnished by a religion, or a 
philosophy, which are by them believed to start with 
illegitimate assumptions. And if it be believed that 
they do so start, are they not nobly right? for how 
could any man worthy the name allow himself to 
avoid thus ignominiously the single battle he must 
fight victoriously against pessimism, or perish ? And 
it is quite certain that " there is not a creed that is 
not shaken, not an accredited dogma which is not 
shown to be questionable, not a received tradition 
which does not threaten to dissolve." Agnostics 
must come to some conclusion quite as much as other 
men. Perpetual serene suspense of soul is not possi- 
ble, any more, than perpetual hanging by the neck 
without suffocation. And the men from the agnostic 
ranks who have bravely challenged the problem and 
given us a record of their life and death struggle in 
noble verse are Arthur Huffh Clouirh, Matthew Ar- 



* Browning's Cleon. 



102 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

nold, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, and Algernon Charles 
Swinburne. 

2. ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 

Harmony of sopl must be obtained. Heart and 
head must agree upon terms of peace. But how ? 
How shall you envisage the feeling which survives the 
thought? Is the feeling only an afterglow, lasting 
but a little longer, diffused over half heaven and 
earth's highest peaks? If the sun of intellectual con- 
viction has indeed set, can we expect any permanence 
for this creedless worship, this hunger for the infinite? 
Or has the sun been merely eclipsed by moon and 
clouds simultaneously, so that this dim twilight in 
which we walk will be heightened to daylight again 
by and by? Oris it such light as that in northern 
climes which never forsakes the sky, though it leaves 
the earth in gloom, waiting and watching between 
day and day ? 

Upon the conception of the dignity of religious 
feeling depends its treatment. Can it and ought it to 
be extirpated ? Can it and ought it to be so increased 
by artificial stimuli that it may become quasi-inde- 
pendent of opinions and convictions? The former is 
Mr. Swinburne's view (if the writer of this paper un- 
derstands him), the latter Rossetti's. If neither of 
these methods be adopted, what middle ground can 
be taken ? 

There is Arthur Hugh Clough's* attempt to win 
" peace out of strife." Loyalty to truth is to him a 
maxim, a necessity: 

"And yet, when all is thought and said, 



References are to Macmillan's 1 vol. edition. 



ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 103 

The heart still overrules the head ; 
Still what we hope we must believe 
And what is given us receive." * 

Of course the sentiment attaching to ancestral 

creeds is recognized, but it can not and must not 

sway us. 

"The souls of now two thousand years 
Have laid up here their toils and fears, 
And all the earnings of our pain, 
Ah ! yet consider it again ! 

Alas ! the great w T orld goes its way, 
And takes the truth from each new day. 
They do not quit, nor can retain, 
Far less consider it again." t 

The moral power which those creeds fostered, 
however, must by all means ba preserved. If the 
garden is ahout to wither in a " winter of discontent," 
let us speedily gather in the flowers and distill from 
them an essence of piety, self-oblation, and patience. 
We have been freed from the shackles of history. 
Duty must be understood in a better way, in harmony 
with a religious feeling which has outlived conviction. 
Duty, then, and piety, are maids no longer; nor wives 
either, for that matter. Decalogue J and Convention,! | 
successive husbands of Duty, are both dead. Intel- 
lectual conviction has breathed his last, and religious 
feeling, or Piety, is alone. Two widows in weeds of 
mourning, sworn not to remarry, but to live on mem- 
ories of old home happiness, Duty and Piety come, as 
it were, to espouse one another; at least such seems 
to be Clough's hope. 



* "Through a glass darkly," p. 51. 

t "Ah, yet, consider it again," p. 52. 

t The latest Decalogue, p. 134. || Duty, p. 131. 



104 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

" God ! God ! the great floods of the sou 
Flow over ine ! I come into deep waters 
Where no ground is." * 

After a while, however, the agony sobers down. 

A hope that ere we choke we shall "feel our feet upon 

the ground" f in a different sense than that meant by 

the Spirit of this world, comes to us, bidding us 

" wait:"— 

"And thou, human heart of mine, 
Be still, refrain thyself, and wait! t 

Nor shall our waiting be idle expectancy : — 

" If live we positively must 

God's name be blest for noble deeds." || 

Are the stained glass windows in the soul's ora- 
tory broken? Shall we wail over the loss of our 
good apostolic figures in their blue or scarlet mantles? 

"Are, say you, Matthew, Mark, and Luke and Holy John 
Lost? Is it, lost, to be recovered never? 
However, 

The place of worship the meantime with light 
Is, if less richly, more sincerely bright 
And in blue skies the orb is manifest. 2 

Is the physical resurrection of Jesus incredible? 

At all events, his spiritual influence is a fact: — 

" Though dead, not dead ; 
Not gone, though fled; 
Not lost, though vanished. 
In the Great Gospel and true creed 
He is yet risen indeed ; 
Christ is yet risen." f 

To be sure, such an attitude isolates a man. Be- 
lievers and disbelievers alike scorn or pity him. Old 



* Dipsychus, sc. vi, p. 115. t Id., sc. viii, p. 124. 

t In a London Square, p. 143. || Dipsychus, sc. iii, p. 98. 

§ Epi-Strauss-ium, p. 53. % Easter Day, p. 63. 



ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 105 

friendships are strained. Yet he blames none. In 
three poems he vindicates himself and his friends. 
Who can help divergence in convictions? And if ele- 
venpence in convictions involves the cooling of affec- 
tion, how can that be prevented? But both his " Sic 
Itur" and " Qua Cursum Ventus" end with hope: — 

" Whether he then shall cross to thee, 
Or thou go thither, or it be 
Some midway point ye yet shall see 

Each other, yet again shall meet. 
Ah, joy ! when with the closing street 
Forgivingly at last ye greet.'' * 

What stern consciousness of duty, what strong 
yearning for mutual sympathy, what invincible af- 
fection, personal vanity never marring his esteem 
for those from whom his quest of truth parts him ! 
But there is a sadder "Parting" — "Qui Laborat, 
Orat" and "15/zvdc dy/zvoc" are records of it. Direct 
communion with the Friend of Friends seems denied 

him : 

" 0, not unowned, Thou shalt unnamed forgive, 
In worldly walks the prayerless heart prepare, 
And if in work its life it seemed to live, 
Shalt make that work be prayer." 

Yet what a grand self-renunciation in lines like 
these : 

" But, as Thou wiliest, give or even forbear, 
The beatific, supersensual sight, 
So, with thy blessing blest, that humbler prayer 
Approach Thee morn and night." t 

. What a girding of the spirit for a blind battle, in 
the thought that the friends, maybe those we have 
parted from, are now all but conquerors! Why al- 



sic Itur, p. 29. t " Qui laborat, orat," p. 4/ 



106 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

ways scrutinize the East, and despair at the slowness 
of the dawn? Even windows looking. westward ad- 
rait light! * 

The message of Clough at length is summed up 
in two poems, " The Questioning Spirit" and " Hope 
Evermore and Believe." 

Yes, "Doubt" has its work to do. Not to lead, 
maybe, to theoretic certainty, but to that practical 
certainty which can dispense with theory. Long ago 
had he cried : 

"Away, haunt thou not me 
Thou vain philosophy ! . . . 
Why labor at trie dull mechanic oar, 
When the fresh breeze is blowing, 
And the strong current flowing, 
Right onward to the eternal shore ?" t 

The Questioning Spirit gets no answer from Clough 

save : "I know not, I will do my duty," and the Spirit 

answers him : 

" Truly ! thou know 'st not, and thou need'st not know ; 
Hope only, hope thou, and believe alway; 
I also know not, and I need not know, 
Only with questionings pass I to and fro, 
Perplexing these that sleep, and in their folly 
Inbreeding doubt and skeptic melancholy ; 
Till that, their dreams deserting, they with me 
Come all to this true ignorance and thee." + 

After all is not theory for practice? If a happy 
instinct, or if the genius of work itself, make possible 
a practice more and more perfect without any theory 
of the intellect, provided we retain the theory of the 
heart, — which is faith in the absolute value of prac- 



*Cf. " Say not the struggle naught availeth," p. 326. 

t " In a Lecture-Room," p. 7. i The Questioning Spirit, p. 136. 



ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 107 

tice, and hope of its beautiful issues, — then wherefore 
be any longer anxious? Of course, pursue truth. 
Believe it worth pursuing because you hope to hold 
it against your beating heart some day. But, in the 
meanwhile, before you have come near enough to 
truth to sense it with certainty, do not pretend to an 
intimate acquaintance with form, features, and ex- 
pression. You have seen Truth as a romantic lover, 
his fair lady in a dream only. Let your dream en- 
courage you, but prepare for her actual splendors by 
letting the dream fade, if fade it must ! 

" Go from the East to the West, as the sun and the stars direct 
thee, 
Go with the girdle of man, go and encompass the earth. 
Not for the gain of the gold; for the getting, the hoarding, the 
having, 
But for the joy of the deed ; but for the duty to do. 
Go with the spiritual life, the higher volition and action, 
With the great girdle of God, go and encompass the earth." * 

Two things, however, must be guarded against. 
An absurd conceit that any thing we do has absolute 
worth to others and to God : an absurd self-contempt, 
mere transmuted vanity, which would refrain from 
action. 

" Go, when the instinct is stilled, and when the deed is accom- 
plished, 
What thou hast done and shalt do, shall be declared to thee 
then. 
Go with the sun and the stars, and yet evermore in thy spirit 

Say to thyself : It is good : yet is there better than it. 
This that I see is not all, and this that I do is but little ; 
Nevertheless it is good, though there is better than it." " :: 



Hope Evermore and Believe," p. 138. 



108 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

To see the worth of doubt that destroys dogmatic 
knowledge crying to it in tones of authority : 

" The tyranny of heaven none may retain, 
Or re-assume, or hold succeeding thee ;" * 

giving scope to faith, and yet not allowing it to call 
itself" knowledge," applying to faith boldly the same 
doom ; not only to see the worth of doubt, but to feel 
it, and therefore to foster doubt, while also fostering 
faith ; requires indeed a courageous soul. He is the 
man Bishop Blougram would fain have made himself 
out to be. 

" What matter though I doubt at every pore, 
Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my ringers' ends, 
Doubts in the trivial work of every day, 
Doubts at the very bases of my soul 
In the grand moments when she probes herself — 
If finally I have a life to show 
The thing 1 did. . . . 

You call for faith 

I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists. 

The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say 

If faith o'ercomes doubt. How I know it does ? 

By life and man's free will. 

All 's doubt in me ; where 's break of faith in this ? 

It is the idea, the feeling and the love, 

God means mankind should strive for and show forth 

Whatever be the process to that end, — 

And not historic knowledge, logic sound, 

And metaphysical acumen." t 

That this abjuration of speculative thought, this 
determination to work in the dark, can not bring 
peace of soul save at the cost of total self-denial, is 



* Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, Act III. 
t Bishop Blougram's Apology, pp. 105-6. Vol. 4, Riverside 
Edition of Robert Browning's Poems. 



ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 109 

perhaps the very consciousness which compels Clough 
more and more to an impartial, great-hearted inclu- 
siveness ; he sees things less and less from the point 
of view of self, insists less and less on his own salva- 
tion ; but, for all this magnanimous, difficult devotion 
to a God who will not reveal himself, he found peace 
only in death. 

Let me quote two stanzas that well define the office 
of doubt. A bird close hidden in dense foliage 

sings : 

" But when the air's -atremble 

With singings that assemble 
All shapeless ecstasies and visions vain, 

The sweep of our own wings 

In seeking him that sings 
Makes angels of us in doubt's passing pain. 

And so thou art a type 

Of God, whose soul is ripe 
For all men, and to find the singer, we 

Have risen from the mire, 

Are what we are, and higher 
Must wander on, until we cease to be !" * 

Surely, however, with Clough, we 

" Must still believe, for still we hope 
That in a world of larger scope 
What here is faithfully begun 
Will be completed, not undone ; " f 

and that at length will " the eyes in recognition 

start," beholding God as he is. 



* The Unseen Singer, St. 4, p. 82, Lyrics, Idylls and Frag- 
ments, by J. H. Armstrong. The Publishers' Printing Co., 120 E. 
14th St., N. Y. 

t "Through a glass darkly," p. 51. 



110 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

3. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 

But if Clough, compelling doubt to what seems 
its legitimate function, and while preventing any 
usurpation of improper authority by "faith," also- 
compelling doubt not to maim or slay " faith," lives 
in fierce unrest; Mr. Swinburne is certainly no more 
fortunate. To be sure, he resolutely dons jeweled 
armor of verse, and, wielding with both hands a long- 
sword of flaring rhetoric, fights faith with much 
clatter if little slaughter; for, of course, "faith" will 
not come 'close enough to this very terrible fellow, 
even for distant inspection. His yells and execrations 
have a most courageous ring. But do you call it vic- 
tory to be always in need of bell-book and candle to 
pronounce some voluble curse on an enemy one always 
fancies dead, only to encounter alive again after a 
little while, for all our killing anathemas ? 

Bishop Blougram has once for all expressed in 
strong language the true nature of the problem con- 
fronting Mr. Swinburne : 

" Our dogmas then 
(With both of us, though in unlike degree, 
Missing full credence) — overboard with them! . . . 
And now what are we? unbelievers both, 
Calm and complete, determinately fixed 
To-day, to-morrow and forever, pray ? 
You '11 guarantee me that? Not so, I think ! 
In no wise ! All we 've gained is, that belief, 
As unbelief before, shakes us by fits, 
Confounds us like its predecessor. Where 's 
The gain ? How can we guard our unbeWei, 
Make it bear fruit to us ? — the problem here. 
Just when we are safest, there's a sunset touch, 
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. Ill 

A chorus ending from Euripides, — 

And that 's enough for fifty hopes and fears 

As old and new at once as nature's self, 

To rap and knock and enter in our soul, 

Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring, 

Around the ancient idol, on his base again, — 

The grand Perhaps ! . . . 

All we have gained then by our unbelief 

Is a life of doubt diversified by faith, 

For one of faith diversified by doubt : 

We called the chess-board white, — we call it black.'' 

Now the problem "how to guard our unbelief," 
so far as we can judge from Mr. Swinburne's poems, 
he addressed himself to solve with Li vigor and rigor." 

Eschew all regions associated hitherto with outgrown 
superstitions. Ensue the path of excesses to the 
abode of a mediaeval Ten us- witch. Indulge in dot- 
ings,like Chastelard's, on some vicious vanity. If satia- 
tion or disenchantment should again endanger us, take 
imaginative refuge in times whose religion was other 
than ours, where no hints of our discarded supersti- 
tions in their wonted and therefore dangerous form 
may lurk. In the garden of Proserpine, with Atalanta 
in Calydon, with Erechtheus of ancient Athens! It 
maybe, however, that in the end we shall behold Eate 
bearing unpleasant, if remote, resemblance to Provi- 
dence. Eor. notwithstanding all the fury of Mr. 
Swinburne's genius and all his scholarship, in spite 
of his excursion with Baudelaire into unhallowed 
regions, and his persistent use of colored glasses that 
make all familiar objects safely new and strange, he is 
not able to escape from his fierce unrest without 
formulating a definite creed. And this he does at 
considerable length in more than one passage. 

Life offers a reasonable amount of gratification in 



112 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

return for a definite amount of exertion and endu- 
rance. If you train yourself to expect no more than 
you are likely to get, you will be content. Extrava- 
gant ambitions, unreasonable heart-claims, unsatis- 
fiable spiritual aspirations, must be deliberately ex- 
tirpated. One can systematically induce the atrophy 
little by little of all those faculties (or rather supposed 
faculties) for which this present life affords no scope. 
Then the normal exercise of the rest will constitute 
the summ.um bonum. Make your mental and senti- 
mental vision exactly coincide with ocular perception. 
Get rid of ghosts. Stop worrying about shadows, and 
take a good hold of the bone with your teeth ! 

"His soul is even with the sun 
Whose spirit and whose eyes are one ; * 

Who seeks not stars by day, nor light 

And heavy heat of day by night. 
Him can no God cast down, whom none 

Can lift in hope beyond the height 
Of fate and nature, and things done 

By the calm rule of might and right 
That bids men be and bear and do 
And die beneath blind skies or blue.t 

In other terms, extinguish yearnings, delicate 
dreams, sensitive affections, ecstatic wants, which 
inhere neither in the stomach, nor the liver, nor the 
lungs. Be an intelligent, sensible, reasonably genial, 
self-indulgent animal, and if you are that and nothing 
else you will find life worth living. He who cuts his coat 
to his cloth may go scantily clad, but does not get 

* Cf. Whose mind is but the mind of his own eyes, 
He is a slave — the meanest we can meet ! 

— (Wordsworth, Personal Talk, Sonnet 2.) 
In the Appendix will be found a sketch of Wordsworth's 
practical philosophy for comparison with Swinburne and Arnold. 
t Prelude to Songs before Sunrise, St. 5. 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 113 

into his tailor's debt ! And scant clothing is not so 
dreadful when once one is well rid of the crass super- 
stition of fine clothes ! 

~No doubt Mr. Swinburne would not wish to put 
the case so coarsely. Like the true poet that he is, 
he can not wholly " quench the spirit." He finds his 
own solace in hysterical advocacies of social reform, 
in sincere admirations that amount to frenzies for 
Mazzini and Victor Hugo. His language is never 
temperate. Either he worships almost fulsomely, or 
he iiares up and glares about in a manner wild enough 
to terrify the very harpies and furies. We can not 
help overhearing them as they quote Lord Byron 
about his detractor : 
" Had he been one of us he would have made a,n awful spirit! " * 

Indeed, something histrionic there is in the ut- 
terances of this bard. A man can not be chronically 
on the tripod, inhaling fumes of sincere Pythoness 
madness. It has become a set manner, no doubt a 
trick of style of which he is barely aware. If he 
opens his mouth he roars, unless he happens to be 
tripping with rope-walker's agility about some cradle, 
executing antics, which are clue, we fancy, less to 
paternal passion than to a frantic worship of Victor 
Hugo, who was so notoriously addicted to gracious 
poetic sessions in a grandfather's chair. Who knows 
if his political fervors also were not communicated to 
him from the great French " half charlatan, half 
genius," as Matthew Arnold was imprudent enough 
to call him. 

Yet, who could better dress cap-a-pie in chain 



Byron's Manfred, Act 2, Scene 4. 



114 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

mail forged of close verse than this wonderful word- 
smith has done, the doctrine that all these "hopes 
and fears," which enter unbidden our disbelieving soul, 
do not indeed proclaim the deity of Blougram's 
"Grand Perhaps," but bear clear witness to the deit}^ 
of the soul itself? 

" But weak is change, but strengthless time, 
To take the light from heaven or climb 

The hills of heaven with wasting feet. 

Songs they can stop that earth found meet, 
But the stars keep their ageless rhyme ; 

Flowers they can slay that spring thought sweet, 
But the stars keep their spring sublime; 

Passions and pleasure can defeat, 
Actions and agonies control, 
And life and death, but not the soul. 
Because man's soul is man's God still, . . . 
Save his own soul's light overhead, 
None leads him, and none ever led, 

Across birth's hidden harbor bar, 

Past youth where shoreward shallows are, 
Through age that drives on toward the red 

Vast void of sunset hailed from far, 
To the equal waters of the dead ; 

Save his own soul he hath no star, 
And sinks, except his own soul guide, 
Helmless in middle turn of tide.* 

It is Swinburne who cries : 
" Glory to Man in the highest ! for Man is the master of things." t 
But then, we fancy, it is not to the man of bone 
and sinew, flesh and blood, he ascribes the glory : 
" To the pure spirit of man that men call God. 
To the high' soul of things, that is 
Made of men's heavenlier hopes, and mightier memories." + 

* Prelude to Songs before Sunrise, St. 14-16. 

t Hymn of Man, last line. 

t "Blessed among Women," St. 19. 



DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 115 

He has taken to heart Shelley's suggestion : 

" It is a modest creed, and yet 
Pleasant when one considers it, 
To own that Death itself must be 
Like all the rest a mockery." * 

For if " God " is " the shade cast by the soul of 
man," "Death" is "the shadow cast by life's wide 
wings." f 

Whether we ought to accept Mr. Swinburne as 

an accredited teacher may be tested by his own words. 

He himself tells us that : 

" only souls that keep their place 
By their own light, and watch things roll. 
And stand, have light for any soul." ± 

He adds also that " the sacred spaces of the sea \ 
are "Known of souls only, and those souls free." 

I shall not take it upon myself to say whether or 
not Mr. Swinburne be qualified to "prophesy;" only 
it would seem that of serene composure, and superb 
freedom of soul there is slight evidence in his wonder- 
ful verse. He has burned many men of straw with 
inquisitorial zeal, but the realities they represented 
still live to torture him and like-minded disbelievers. 

4. DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, realist and symbolist, at- 
tempts, as we suggested before, " to iucrease the 
power of faith by artificial stimulation sufficient to 
make it quasi-independent of opinions and convic- 
tions." (p. 102.) How has he succeeded ? 



* Conclusion to Sensitive Plant, St. 4. 
t Genesis, in Songs before Sunrise, St. 5. 
X Prelude to Songs before Sunrise, St. 17. 

lib., St. 19. 



116 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

First, let us make sure by quotation that he is au 

agnostic. 

" Let lore of all Theology 
Be to thy soul what it can be : 
But know, —the power that fashions man 
Measured not out thy little span 
For thee to take the meting-rod 
In turn, and so approve on God 
Thy science of Theounetry."* 

Theology plainly can be something to some souls. 
It was to his own something. What, we know. Of 
all remorseless, earnest poems, perhaps the most won- 
derful is " The Cloud Confines," with its fearfully 
bitter refrain : 

"The day is dark, and the night, 

To him that would search their heart; . . . 
Deep under deep unknown 
And height above unknown height. . . . 
no word comes from the dead, 
Whether at all they be, 
Or whether as bond or free, 
Or whether they too were we, . . . 
What of the heart of hate. . . . 
War that shatters her slain, 
And peace that grinds them as grain? . . . 
What of the heart of love . . . 
Thy bells prolonged into knells, 
Thy hope that a breath dispells, 
Thy bitter forlorn farewells, 
And the empty echoes thereof?" 

And, summing up in one tremendous stanza all 
the agony of agnosticism which has not learned as 
yet aloofness from our pitiful conditions and indiffer- 
ence to our persistent needs, he cries : 

"The sky leans dumb on the sea, 
Aweary with all its wings ; 

* Soothsay, St, 12. 



DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 117 

And, oh ! the song the sea sings 
Is dark everlastingly. 

Our past is clean forgot, 

Our present is and is not. 

Our future's a sealed seedplot, 
And what betwixt them are we ? 
We who say as we go, — 

' Strange to think, by the way, 
Whatever there is to know, 

That shall we know one day.' " * 

Who possesses more power of realistic reproduc- 
tion than the poet of " Jenny ? " What poem is more 
terribly true in all its details of suggestive sensations 
than "My Sister's Sleep?" Are not "Even So," 
" Sudden Light," " The Honey-Suckle," " The Wood- 
spurge," and "Possession," pieces of self-dissection, 
characterized throughout by a scientific precision 
which no psychologist (not even Robert Browning) 
could surpass? Even if they are, as some assert, 
analyses of more or less diseased or extraordinary 
states of soul, studies in psychic pathology have their 
value. Is there in them any thing mystical ? 

" There is . . . in possession still 
A further reach of longing." t 

Yes; but is that longing a witness to something 
invisible now, which can satisfy it? Perhaps we are 
discouraged, if we nurse any such hope, by the fact. 
that the " thinned, harried blossom " was thrown away 
when confronted by the "virgin lamps of scent and 
dew,"j yet the original desire was quenched, now 
that it could be perfectly gratified, and they remained 
unpicked. That when we are greatly agitated, the 



* The Cloud Confines. t Possession. 

% The Honey-Suckle. 



118 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

senses respond naturally, and seem to throw off the 
yoke of experience, so that the sea and sky seem 
to lie in a continuous flat, vertical surface " one wall" — 
all depth and solidity lost — nothing above us and 
nothing below ; * that when sorrow is especially keen 
we are almost "beside ourselves," and the disengaged 
faculties work in a surprisingly collected mechanical 
way, so that of our absolute grief we get only an un- 
related botanical fact; f that at times we are awed by 
inexplicable memories, as though all the present had 
been acted out once before J — all this is certainly true 
observation. ISio theory is based on them. They are 
left as precise pictures of psychic experience to speak 
for themselves. In " Sea Limits," perhaps, we have 
got one step farther. A kind of maze surrounds us. 
We do not know our way out. The effects produced 
on us by causes apparently most unlike are much the 
same. Are we, therefore, to ascribe to them a unity 
of origin, or indeed of present being? 

" Earth, sea, man, are all in each." \ 

Why it is that we so obstinately associate external 
phenomena with certain internal experiences with 
which, so far as we know, they were never more than 
fortuitously coincident — who can say? To a man 
who has Hoed at all events : 

" Sea and wind are one with memory." || 

Are not, may be, external phenomena the mani- 
festations to us of the psychic experiences of invisible 
beings akin to us ? Are not these irrational associations 
due to subtle sympathy with them? Of course, we do not 



Even So. t The Woodspurge. % Sudden Light. 

The Sea-limits. j| Penumbra, last line. 



DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 119 

know. In our utter ignorance we may allow ourselves 
to dream. Our limited scale of sensations, and the 
possible movement of its limits upward and down- 
ward, would let us conceive of the possibility of living, 
thinking societies all about us, in whose midst we 
"live and move and have our being," we all but un- 
conscious of them, and they unconscious or not of 
us — who knows ? 

At once we feel a desire to explore these regions 
closed to man. We hear of the past — miracles, 
ghosts, witchcraft, magic ! The Roman Church to- 
day makes thaumaturgic wonders of her sacraments. 

What if in all these distorted records of real hu- 
man experience, — even though to some extent mor- 
bid, — there lurk some little grain of truth with which 
we have not reckoned? Are we not even now peer- 
ing across thresholds, straying into borderlands, creep- 
ing into valleys of mystery between the mountains of 
familiar fact ? 

In this quickened sense of wonder there is an 
anodyne for the ache of doubt. Faith, now robbed 
of definite intellectual support, and about to die, feels 
once more a heightened pulse. To Father Hilary, 

" the breath 
Of God in man that warranteth 
The inmost, utmost things of faith,"* 

is "Awe," — and if the organ tones, the chants, the 
vestments, the incense, the candlelight, mingled with 
stained sunshine and purple gloom, the sacring bell, 
the elevated host, — if the silence, like arctic cold, bind 
the conflicting sea of people into one solid sympathy 



* World's Worth, St. 3. 



120 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

of pure white peace and serene communion under an 
auroral sky of mystery, then surely is it well to spend 
an hour with Father Hilary, and know " the worth ' ; 
of our world at length : — 

" Oh, God ! my world in thee !" 

Do we wonder that " the Blessed Damozel " was 
written? Yet, even when thus abandoning himself 
to theology, and letting her be to him all she could, 
Rosetti did not forsake his grasp on present fact. 
All along we are made to feel that the poem is the 
record of a dream, a dream woven of rare interpreta- 
tions of ordinary sense stimuli: yellow autumn leaves 
flitting down in showers ; a glimpse of wheat sheaves 
in some harvested field ; and bird-song like a handful 
of pearls flung into crystal glasses ; a glint of blue, 
sudden and unexpected ; and the quick drip of drops 
from mist-moistened branches in the very gust of 
wind that betrayed the clear sky one moment over- 
head.* 

But in Rose Mary we have Rosetti's masterpiece. 
Who does not forget his own agnosticism, be it never 
so belligerent, as he reads — if he reads at all — this 
marvelous poem? One is drenched, I will admit, 
in a heavy atmosphere of over-faith, but is not that 



* Are not Mr. Max Nordau's comments on this poem a most 
delightful piece of learned ignorance and willful stupidity? (Cf. 
Degeneration, pages 87-91.) Why did this doctor, enamored of 
criticism, insane and foaming at the mouth, not acquaint himself 
more thoroughly with our poet? If he had, how he would have 
relished Rosetti's Blake-cult ! And how, had he read the Essay- 
on Blake, or the Essay on Victor Hugo, would it have fared with 
poor Mr. Swinburne ! Verse is licensed by all to be a little wild 
and fantastic — but prose ? What a horrible case of degeneration 
could not have been made out ! 



DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 121 

wholesomer than the cruel thin, cold air, which the 
lungs refuse, on peaks of barren knowledge ? 

In the great sonnet series, together with some 
poems not in sonnet form, we find a tale of life and 
love, of faith and doubt. You object that it is a river 
losing itself in Sahara sands? True. But why? 
For the very reason that makes it so real. After 
all, we are not otherwise now than in the flesh. To 
anticipate the time when we shall be bodiless is ab- 
surd. The relations of bodies serve as a continuous 
orchestral accompaniment to the broken melody of 
soul. Certain forms, tones, color combinations, pos- 
tures, are indissolubly tangled with our loves and 
hates. Her body he knows not from her soul. He 
can not. That her soul lives he knows, because her 
body testifies it to his senses. In absence, it is mem- 
ory and imagination at his bidding that furnish her 
soul with a body. And memory and imagination do 
not always do so well. Let the lovers sit down in the 
same room, each busy at a different task, and he feels 
all the while her presence. Separate them many miles, 
and only at happy intervals is she felt to be near. Let 
death intervene, and then surely only at very rare 
moments does his soul cry : — 

" Your heart is never away, 

But ever with mine, forever, 

Forever without endeavor, 
To-morrow, love, as to-day ; 
Two blent hearts never astray, 

Two souls no power may sever, 

Together, my love, forever! " * 

* Parted Presence, St. 6. 



122 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

At other moments, far commoner, comes the ach- 
ing consciousness : 

" She is hence and I am here." * 

At other moments, in fact, it needs an argument 
to prove to himself that he does not forget : 

" Didst ever say, ' Lo, I forget?' 
Such thought was to remember yet: 
Gaze onward without claim to hope 
Nor gazing backward court regret." t 

It is this mystery of death which he compares to 

the 

"Heath, 
Forest and water, far and wide, 
In limpid starlight glorified," t 

which imparts so peculiar a sense of bewilderment to 
many of the sonnets. 

" Cling heart to heart, nor of this hour demand, 
Whether in very truth, when we are dead, 
Our hearts shall wake to know Love's golden head 
Sole sunshine of the imperishable land, 

Or but discern, through night's unfeatured scope, 
Scorn-fired at length the illusive eyes of Hope." || 

" O love, my love ! if I no more should see 
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee 

Nor image of thine eyes in any spring, 
How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope, 
The ground whirl of the perished leaves of Hope, 

The wind of Death's imperishable, wing." § 

"A wayfarer by barren ways and chill, 

Steep ways and weary, without her thou art, 
Where the long cloud, the long wood's counterpart, 
Sheds double darkness up the laboring hill."^[ 



A Death-parting. f Soothsay, St. 14. t Portrait, St. 9. 

Sonnet 43. I Sonnet 4. f Sonnet 53. 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 123 

What an interpretation of the heart by an intui- 
tive recognition of its moods in nature ! Nature is 
not personified, and yet she is full of man. What 
poems in single words ! What richness of music ! 
What a startling observation of details so meaning- 
less that they overwhelm one with half-forgotten asso- 
ciated meanings ! 

" Not I myself know all my love for thee, 

How should I. reach so far who can not weigh 
To-morrow's dower by gauge of yesterday? 
Shall birth and death and all dark names that be 
As doors and windows bared to some loud sea, 

Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray ; 
And shall my sense pierce love, the last relay 
And ultimate outpost of eternity ?" * 

How blessed a thing that he did not torture his 
heart to explain the " why " of love ! His very skep- 
ticism delivered him from such aimless, love-killing 
self-scrutiny. The loud sea of mystery on which 
death and birth open ; those " ultimate things unut- 
tered " behind the "shaken shadow intolerable" 
which serves them as " frail screen ;" f the impene- 
trable " distances beyond the "utmost bound of 
thought ;" I all these are God to him. And when he 
tries to name Him he utters " only the one Hope's 
one name " in a whisper the readers of his poems 
must not be allowed to hear from him, lest they con- 
jure with it, and wreck for him his wonder-world be- 
yond the grave ! 

5. MATTHEW ARNOLD. 

Such kinship as Rossetti bears to the Coleridge of 
Christabel and of the Ancient Mariner, Matthew Ar- 



Sonnet 34. t Sonnet 97. i Sonnet 73. 



124 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

nold bears to Wordsworth. Some of us had strange 
experiences when first we read Arnold. Did we ap- 
proach him as we did Swinburne? We did not need 
to find in Arnold's letters the following assurance 
that he took his poetic calling seriously : — 

" To attain or approach perfection in the region 
of thought and feeling, and to unite this with perfec- 
tion of form, demands not merely an effort, a labor, 
but an actual tearing of oneself to pieces which one 
does not readily consent to (although one is sometimes 
forced to it) unless one can devote one's whole life to 
poetry." * 

That he sought to attain perfection of thought 
and feeling, and to marry this perfection to that of 
form, we feel in almost every poem. But the man 
has something disappointing in him. He is " unstable 
as water." The Moon rightly says to him : 

' ; Hast thou then still the old unquiet breast, 
Which neither deadens into rest, 
Nor ever feels the fiery glow 
That whirls the spirit from itself away, 
But fluctuates to and fro, 
Never by passion quite possessed 
And never quite benumbed by the world's sway ?"t 

What a master at diagnosis ! What an unsatis- 
factory prescriber ! No sooner do we think we shall 
have at length the solution of our woes — it is at his 
tongue's end — than it eludes him and us, and he 
gives us instead some beautiful bit of landscape paint- 
ing, some snatch of rare music remembered just in 



* Letters of Matthew Arnold, Vol. I, p. 72. 

t "A Summer Night," p. 279 (Macmillan's 1 vol edition). 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 125 

time to save him from embarrassment, and us from 
positive distress of soul. 

We are not so unreasonable as to expect of him 
a, clear exposition of something which to be known 
must be personally experienced. We are prepared 
to admit that even with the most fortunate of poets : 

" Weak is the tremor of pain 
That thrills in his uoournfulest chord 
To that which once ran through his soul. 
Cold the elation of joy 
In his gladdest, airiest song, 
To that which of old in his youth 
Filled him and made him divine. 
Hardly his voice at its best 
Gives us a sense of the awe, 
The vastness, the grandeur, the gloom, 
Of the unlit gulf of himself." * 

But why should he not be able to " speak out ?"' Was 
he not endowed with the requisite " sad lucidity of 
soul ?" f If such be the price 

" The Gods exact for song: 
To become what we sing " t 

he paid it by singing what he had become. True, we 

rarely, if ever, 

" Even for a moment, can get free 
Our heart, and have our lips unchained ; 
For that which seals them hath been deep-ordained," || 

but our thought, if it is clear, we can communicate. 
And that Arnold must have had some solution of the 
great question of life we can not but believe from 
the fact that he tells us the poet's business is to help 
us forget " Such barren knowledge awhile " § as fills 



* The Youth of Man, p. 267. t Eesignation, p. 55. 

X The Strayed Reveller, p. 194. || The Buried Life, p. 282. 

I Heine's Grave, p. 331. 



126 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

us with secret unrest, while notwithstanding he fol- 
lows the example of Byron, and exhibits the sores of 
his soul. This he surely could not have done with 
decent consistency had he not thought himself pos- 
sessed of a salve for each sore, and that by exhibiting 
the sores he could more effectively recommend the 
salve to similarly stricken souls. 

Yes, he must have — indeed his poems show he 
did have — answers to the question — only, perhaps, 
he never trusted entirely in any one of them, and 
with his constitutional dislike for continuous abstract 
thinking never " gave himself a clear account of the 
good they had done him " severally, and could do the 
world. That would have involved their comparison 
and systemization. 

No man of modern times was more aware of the 

hollowness of our world : 

Our petty souls, our strutting wits, 
Our labored, puny passion-fits." * 

E"o man more fully realized that, in view T of our pres- 
ent frivolousness, caprice, and; lack of self-reverence, 
it is well if our 

"... unspeakable desire 
After the knowledge of our buried life " t 

remains ungratitied. He sympathized with 

" The spirit of the world, 
Beholding the absurdity of men, — 
Their vaunts, their feats," — 

and was not surprised that he 

" . . . let a sardonic smile, 
For one short moment, wander o'er his lips," t 



• Urania, p. 204. t The Buried Life, p. 283. 

t Heine's Grave, p. 334. 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 127 

for he knew that 

" one thing only has been lent 
To youth and age in common — discontent," * 

and that this is no new thing but 

" That wild, unquench'd, deep-sunken old-world pain " t 

which the nightingale sang of old in Greece, and sings 

now in London suburbs. Sophocles, when he heard 

the ^Egean Sea, caught the same " eternal note of 

sadness : " 

" the turbid ebb and flow 
Of human misery." I 

Indeed, things are worse with us to-day — 
much — we 

" Who fluctuate idly without term or scope, 

Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives, 
And each half lives a hundred different lives." || 

And who, therefore, in spite of all our energy, 

" Never once possess our soul 
Before we die." $ 

We have come too late into this world, not to 

. . . "despise 
The barren optimistic sophistries 
Of comfortable moles, whom what they do 
Teaches the limit of the just and true 
(And for such doing they require not eyes)."H 

Yes, and these sophistries are known to be barren. 

" Not milder is the general lot 
Because our spirits have forgot, 
In action's dizzying eddy whirl'd, 
The something that infects the world." ** 



* Youth's Agitations, p. 36. t Philomela, p. 203. 

t Dover Beach, p. 212. || The Scholar Gypsy, p. 296. 

§ A Southern Night, p. 314. ** Resignation, p. 58. 

H To a Republican Friend, 1848, p. 6. 



128 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

I. Two facts, at last analysis, confront us, the in- 
sufficiency of self to self and the need, therefore, of 
perfect sympathy ; the insufficiency of scope the actual 
world gives the self, and the need, therefore, of modi- 
fying the world, and, if that be impossible, the self. 
With both these facts Arnold deals. 

(a) No one has ever expressed so well as he our 
soul-solitariness. 

" The affinities have strongest part 
In youth, and draw men heart to heart, 
As life wears on and finds no rest, 
The individual in each breast 
Is tyrannous to sunder them." * 

True, but even in youth, if we only knew, between 
the shores of these island-souls of ours, some cruel 
God has put 

" The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea." t 
We feel that we were once 

" Parts of a single continent." t 
We can not help believing that 
" The same heart beats in every human breast;" + 
and we know that only 

" One common wave of thought and joy 
Lifting mankind " || 

will give us contentment ever. Faith used to do this 
for us, but alas ! 

" The sea of faith 
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore 
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. 
But now I only hear 



* Rossetti's Soothsay, St. 6. 

t Switzerland : 5 Isolation, p. 183-4. t The Buried Life, p. 282. 

|| Obermann : Once -More, p. 358. 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 129 

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 
Eetreating, to the breath 
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear 
And naked shingles of the world." • 

Therefore, we turn, with a species of despair, to 
a personal particular sympathy, a single instance of 
human communion. We must make the relation of 
some chosen individual to us so intimate and sufficient 
that the soul can endure to be cut off, if need be, from 
all others. 

'"Ah, love, let us be true 
To one another ! for the world, which seems 
To lie before us like a land of dreams, 
So various, so beautiful, so new, 
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain ; 
And we are here as on a darkling plain 
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and fight, 
Where ignorant armies clash by night." * 

To love, Rossetti turned. He, too, put this tre- 
mendous strain upon love. He, however, found no 
threatening dangers, till his hopes were wrecked on 
the sunk reefs of death. Matthew Arnold finds this 
boat of love utterly unable, even at the outset, to bear 
him on the seas of his distress. We seem to have 
" no natural right" f to any friends, no home for the 
soul seems " destined to be ours." f Each individual 
clings tenaciously to his past. But a " different 
past," X so clung to, is a barrier to mutual under- 
standing. Even understanding friends, starting with 
us on the same quest, are "lost in the storm." || 
Self-knowledge is wanting as the condition of the 
knowledge of others : 



* Dover Beach, p. 212. t Human Life, p. 40. 

t Switzerland Parting, p. 178. || Rugby Chapel, p. 324. 



130 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

" What heart knows another? 
Ah, who knows his own ? " * 
Besides, 

. • . . " time's current strong 
Leaves us true to nothing long." t 

He can not blame any one for not being constant 

in intense love for him. His heart he knows, 

" To be long loved was never framed ; 
For something in its depths doth glow 
Too strange, too restless, too untamed." 

After separation he may similarly expect to find 

himself not loving her he chose, because he sees all 

her 

. . . " being rearranged, 
Passed through the crucible of time," J 

as his has likewise been. 

" Our true affinities of soul." || 

We can not then expect to learn here and now. 
To some other life must be postponed the serene 
greeting " across infinity." || 

Remembering, then, Wordsworth's Green Linnet 
he realizes that happy souls " ask no love " and 
" plight no faith : " 

" For they are happy as they are." I 

It may be that we shall have this perfect chance 
for love only when we shall not need it, and therefore 
no longer seek it. 

(6) Baffled in the direction of soul-satisfying per- 
sonal love, he directs our eyes toward culture, " know- 
ing the best that has been thought in every age " as 



* Switzerland, 2, Parting, p. 178. t A Memory Picture, p. 25. 
X Switzerland, 7, The Terrace at Berne, p. 186. 
U Switzerland, 3, A Farewell, p. 180-1. 
§ Euphrosyne, p. 205. 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 131 

a basis for a general intellectual sympathy. With 

Sophocles we must learn to see " life steadily " and 

see it " whole." * We must try to "gain " "Goethe's 

wide and luminous view/' f accepting his message : 

"Art still has truth, take refuge there." t 

So thanks to wide reading, and seeing all noble 

" sights from pole to pole," we are to enter into a 

gracious world of self-delusion. A sympathy with 

extinct religious faiths may do duty for personal 

convictions : 

" Take me, cowled forms, and fence me round, 
Till I possess my soul again." || 

In default of this sympathy, " turn to poetry as a 
criticism of life (under the conditions fixed by the 
laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty) for consolation 
and stay," § and, if you are yourself a poet at heart, 
go to nature as he does, and when your head is 
troubled and your heart aches, seek those mystic 
exaltations derived from a treatment of nature as 
symbol of the soul, such illusive consolations, as defy- 
ing all exact utterance, are offered in their mys- 
terious beauty at the close of "Mycerinus," "Sohrab 
and Eustum," " Empedocles on Etna," "A Summer 
!N"ight; " such as in "A Wish" he hopes to die with, 
fresh in heart and mind. But then there are draw- 
backs which threaten to render the consolations of 
culture less and less available. We grow old in soul. 
We are left with " the fierce necessity to feel," but 
sooner or later the " power " to feel is taken away.^j 



* Sonnet to a Friend, p. 2. t Obermann, p. 344. 

% Memorial Verses, p. 308. || La Grande Chartreuse, p. 338. 

\ Essay on Poetry. \ Tirstram and Iseult, p. 153. 



132 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

How can we " keep a young lamb's heart among the 

full grown flocks ? " For 

" each day brings its petty dust 
Our soon-choked souls to till, 
And we forget because we must, 
And not because we will." * 

For, after all, is it not true that old age usually 

" Is not to see the world 
As from a height, with rapt, prophetic eyes, 
And heart profoundly stirr'd ; 
And weep, and feel the fullness of the past, 
The years that are no more. 

It is to spend long days 

And not once feel that we were ever young ; 

It is to add, immured 

In the hot prison of the present, month 

To month with weary pain. 

It is to suffer this, 

And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel. 

Deep in our hidden heart 

Festers the dull remembrance of a change, 

But no emotion — none." t 

Then, even if all this were not so, can we cheat 
ourselves with such sophistries as he himself assures 
us do not alter facts at all ? J 

There can be no adequate aesthetic substitute for 
a desired ethical satisfaction. Moreover, aesthetic 
productiveness ceases soon after moral and speculative 
despair sets in. When art has exhausted the momen- 
tum given it by faith, it stands still. Aesthetic pro- 
ductions permeated by ethical and metaphysical no- 
tions from which we decidedly dissent are, just to the 



* Switzerland, 6 Absence, p. 184. t Growing Old, p. 213. 

t Resignation, p. 58. 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 133 

extent of such permeation, offensive. If I am con- 
vinced, for instance, that with death all is at an end, 
I can not see how I shall be comforted by Words- 
worth's "Intimations." In fact, I venture to suspect 
that his great ode would annoy and irritate me beyond 
all courteous endurance. If art be known for an im- 
poster, we shall lose our joy in art. We shall resent 
its appeals as trifling with our despairs. 

We can, of coarse, get joy — pure, disinterested, 
radiant joy — in beauty, as we contemplate nature in 
her nobler aspects, as we abandon ourselves to the 
spell of building, statue, picture, poem, or symphony, 
free creations of man's high art-impulses ; and in the 
study even of the religions and philosophic systems 
man's mind and heart have once been pleased to dwell 
in, one can and often does experience a strange 
aesthetic thrill, when overcome with the sense of the 
vast output of spiritual energy they represent ; but 
the true peace of soul, the cessation of bitter disap- 
pointment when what you feel to be your just ex- 
pectations of dominant holiness and loveliness in the 
actual life of man are not fulfilled, the removal of 
all ache of loneliness from lack of a friend and a God 
can not be so obtained. 



II. The second fundamental proposition of pes- 
simism is that the world about us is unable to serve the 
soul. It does not and can not be brought to conform 
with our ideal of a world. Unless, therefore, we can 
bring to bear on our soul the steady transforming 
power of will, so as to alter the demands we make of 
the world to what it is able and likely to yield us, 



134 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

every day will be one of discontent and disappoint- 
ment. 

Now, this may be done in two ways. Either by 
limiting our desires, extirpating such as are incapable 
of fulfillment in this life, in order to concentrate the 
soul's power of enjoyment: a doctrine like that of 
Epicurus, such as we have found Mr. Swinburne 
adopting, and which bears strong likeness to the 
Wordsworthian, or we quench all outgoing desires 
altogether; draw the soul back upon itself, making 
the soul find its satisfaction not in what it has, or can 
get, but in what it is, and can become ; a doctrine like 
that of Epictetus, and one which no English poet has 
so earnestly preached as Clough. 

(c) Let us try first the Epicurean solution, in wmich 
the will is to save us from pessimism by a restriction 
of the free life of desire, emphasizing without regret 
our individuality. " For a quiet and a fearless mind " * 
all " passionate hopes " will be wisely " resigned." We 
shall not trust in "spells" magical or natural to alter 
our environment and save us so from terror. 

" Mind is the spell which governs earth and heaven, 
Man has a mind with which to plan his safety."! 

The explanation of any successful career is the 

same as that of Wellington's: — 

. . . "wit. 
Which saw one clue to life, and followed it," $ 

or, what is the same, knowledge of its real needs by a 

true self-study : — 

" Once read thy own breast right, 
And thou hast done with fears ; 



* Resignation, p. 57. t Empedocles on Etna, p. 223. 

X Sonnet to the Duke of Wellington, p. 4. 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 135 

Man gets no other light, 
Search he a thousand years. 
Sink in thyself ! There ask what ails thee at that shrine." * 

We are, so far as can be ascertained, the only 
" Bafflers of our own prayers, from youth to life's last scenes. 
We would have inward peace, 

Yet will not look within ; 
We would have misery cease, 
Yet will not cease from sin ; 
We want all pleasant ends, but will use no harsh means." t 

Nor will an} 7 imagined after-life compensations 
seriously be looked for by the reasonable man. Is it 
not far wiser to alter his demands than first to com- 
plain over this world, and then set his imagination to 
creating for himself an illusory world beyond, unseen, 
the object of an irrational faith, a world which shall be 
supposed capable of satisfying these demands? Were 
it not wise to slay our sheep if we have no pasture 
for them ? They will hardly fatten on wind for all our 
efforts : 

" Fools ! that so often here 

Happiness mocked our prayer, 
I think, might make us fear 
A like event elsewhere ; 
Make us, not fly to dreams, but moderate desire." t 

And for those who conscientiously " moderate 
desire " 

" who know 
Themselves, who wisely take 
Their way through life, and bow 
To what they can not break, 
Why should I say that life need yield but moderate bliss?" I 

Making, in Mr. Swinburne's striking words, the 
"spirit" one with the "eyes," nor seeking "stars by 



Empedocles, p. 227. t Id., p. 230. J Id., p. 2 



136 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

day " and " light and heavy heat of day by night," 
sets us right with our world : 

" I say : Fear not ! Life still 

Leaves human effort scope, 
But, since life teems with ill, 

Nurse no extravagant hope; 
Because thou must not dream, thou need'st not then despair." * 

To all this, however, a ready answer comes. One 
can not so easily be resigned to what is repugnant. 
Doubtless there are happy natures fortuitously tuned 
to the same pitch as the world. As a matter of fact, 
does any man exercise such control over himself as 
Empedocles enjoins? Is it not, perhaps, mere vanity 
— such as that which calls "lightness, wisdom," and 
"hardness, force "f — which honors the want of strong 
desires and vehement passions with the name of pain- 
fully acquired self-mastery ? 

For our disease is not so difficult after all to dis- 
cover. Man " fights " with " his lot." And why ? 

" 'T is that he makes his will 
The measure of his right, 
And believes nature outraged if his will 's gainsaid," + 

instead of learning what is his right from what is his 
need, and from what is actually furnished for his enjoy- 
ment. Our unrest originates, then, in a delusion we 
can if we choose dispel : 

" Born into life ! — who lists 

May what is false hold dear, 
And for himself make mists 

Through which to see less clear ; 
The world is what it is, for all our dust and din." || 

The fate we have to complain of, we make. We 



• Empedocles, p. 236. t Switzerland, 3, A Farewell, p. 180. 
t Empedocles, p. 227. I| Id., p. 229. 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 137 

are self-predestined to misery only by our foolish 
deeds, which entail certain objectionable consequences. 

" We do not what we ought, 

What we ought not, we do, 
And lean upon the thought 

That chance will bring us through ; 
But our own acts, for good or ill, are mightier powers." * 

Is it not true that 

" Wordsworth's eyes avert their ken 
From half of human fate " t 

by nature, rather than by art ? Is it not just because 
Wellington saw in his blindness only " one clue to 
life " that he was able to follow it ? And even, sup- 
posing this not to be so, are we all born with wills 
strong enough for such a task as " clipping the wings 
of hope?" Are we ready to do violence to ourselves 
for the sake of enjoyment ? 

There is the compulsory self-limitation of old age, 
and so far as we can judge it is not productive of 
resignation, nor of wisdom. "Our passions" are 
blotted "from our brain," but not by " wiser thoughts 
and feelings." % And if nature succeeds so ill with 
us, shall we succeed better with ourselves? 

Besides, we were rash to assume control of our 
being. Our instincts surrender at once all their work 
to us. We shall have to look at the clock to learn if 
we are hungry, and consult the thermometer to feel if 
we are hot or cold; the natural freedom, changed to 
uneasy constraint ; the freedom from care, for a daily 
self-schooling. Soon we grow pedantic and whimsical. 
" Thought " becomes our slave-master when " sense " 

* Empedocles, p. 230. t Obermann, p. 344. 

t Switzerland, 6, Absence, 184. 



138 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

has been made to surrender his lordship.* And pleas- 
ure can not be ever caught when pursued, or planned 
for, whether directly, or indirectly. If then, we knew 
ourselves, we could not be sure to profit by that difficult 
knowledge. Empedocles commits suicide, not trust- 
ing himself to carry out his theory of life in a consist- 
ent practice. It is very well for Wellington, Epicurus, 
or Wordsworth. It makes eloquent reading in the 
stanzas of Swinburne. Still, it smacks of compromise. 
After we have adapted our desires to our lot, lo, our lot 
changes ! To adapt our desires to any lot, means to 
kill desires altogether. Only indifference can never be 
surprised. But for indifference there is no reward 
of pleasure. Wordsworth after all had his cottage 
and postmastership ; Epicurus his gardens of fair fame ; 
and Wellington his lucky Waterloo ! 

(d) While it is easy to see that "indifference" 
can get no reward from that with reference to which 
it exists, yet, if there be some other source of satisfac- 
tion than the world and what it conditions, the utter 
extinction of desire might not be without rewards. For 
the " light" we would gladly give up the " storms of 
love." f If the soul itself be man's supreme good, 
and God ; if it be true that 

" Still doth the soul from its lone fastness high, 
Upon our life a ruling effluence send ; 
And when it fails, fight as we will, we die, 
And while it lasts we can not wholly end ; " J 

if it is possible to 

" Rally the good in the depths of thyself," || 



* Empedocles, p. 251. t Switzerland, 6, Absence, p. 184. 
X Palladium, p. 273. || The Youth of Man, p. 272. 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 139 

and so to find that 

" The aids to noble life are all within ; " * 

if it be indeed true that " life consisteth not in the 

multitude of things which a man possesseth," because 

our life brings with it, w r hen intense enough, its own 

sufficient bliss ; then, an adverse environment can be 

smiled upon, and solitude become a source of happy 

pride : — 

"Alone the sun arises and alone 
Spring the great streams." t 

That our guiding impulses come to us as waves — 
that there are troughs between the crests — does not 
by any means hinder us from leading a steady life. 
There is no need of a continual vision of God. To see 
Him now and then is enough. 

" We can not kindle when we will 

The fire which in our hearts resides ; 
The Spirit bloweth and is still, 

In mystery our soul abides. 
But tasks in hours of insight willed 
Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled. t 

Perhaps, indeed, they can be better fulfilled when 
new "insight" does not perplex us by a competition 
of interests. 

Until we have "the witness in ourselves," we 
must accept the testimony of others. How do we 
know that goodness is worth every thing? That it is 
a sufficient compensation ? Upon reflection, the only 
possible optimism, secure and stable, is obtained by 
concentrating all the soul's desires upon its own moral 
development. For it is clear that to this all things, all 



* Sonnet, Worldly Place, p. 170. 

t In Utrumque Paratu's, p. 44. t Morality, p. 277. 



140 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

persons, all circumstances can be made to contribute 
equally; that with this for single object, disappoint- 
ment is impossible ; that in Scripture language, " to 
them that love God all things work together for good " 
with an infallibility such as makes a perfect " faith," 
the reverse of " worry," the normal state of heart. But 
supposing there be no answer to the question, " What 
is evolution for ? " except " evolution ! " will the heart 
be altogether satisfied ? 

Suppose we have, as in his youth Arnold had, 
some one near to us who makes us believe that good- 
ness, of which we read in the annals of heroism, is no 
unfounded tradition. Suppose we can say with him 
to some dear friend : 

"through thee I believe 
In the noble and great who are gone ; 
Pure souls honored and blest 
By former ages. . . ." *' 

— and what a glorious thing it is to be able to say 
this to a father ! — still are we not with that very word 
"blest" bringing in, inevitably, the thought of a reward 
all the more real because spiritual, not sensual ? Is 
the last word "growth?" Is it not "bliss?" Na- 
ture's usual lesson may be, "bear rather than rejoice," f 
but, nevertheless, 

"A shiver runs through the deep corn for joy ;" + 
for ripeness, perfection, completion seem to us always 
to involve necessarily a transcendental self-enjoyment. 
And, as a fact, does the "good man" get that reward 
of his service ? 

In the very fact that goodness in others, when 



* Rugby Chapel., p. 326. t Resignation, p. 58. 

t Sohrab and Rustum, p. 64. 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 141 

really seen, creates love, and that to be beloved is the 
supreme desire of the heart, does there not seem to 
lurk a hint that " growth " is for love's sake? Yet do 
we not proverbially stone our prophets and malign 
our benefactors? Do they not always get honors 
posthumously? Is not our love shown in tombs, 
monuments, biographies, for which the man would 
care nothing were he here with us, and which so far 
as we know he does not see ? 

But we seem to forget that the truly "good" of 
w r hom we speak are self-dependent ; that this sup- 
position of a need in them of being beloved is a gra- 
tuitous inference from the fact that we must somehow 
express our love for them. The truly good are as 
the stars : 

" Unaffrighted by the silence round them, 
Undistracted by the sights they see, 
These demand not that the things without them 
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy. 

And with joy the stars perform their shining, 
And the sea its long moon-silvered roll ; 
For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting 
All the fever of some differing soul. 

Bounded by themselves, and unregardful 
In what state God's other works may be, 
In their own tasks all their powers pouring, 
These attain the mighty life you see." * 

It is only because we never fully experienced the 
bliss of doing and being, that we imagine there is any 
need of an after-life to him who lives this life well. 
It is only he who fails here, who can have any interest 



Self Dependence, p. 276. 



142 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

in another life ; the good man does not fear death. 

Only he who yet must pray that he be made to feel 

" That there abides a peace . . . 
Man did not make and can not mar,"* 

who still is in want of 

" The will to neither strive nor cry, 
The power to feel with others," * 

only he fears death, and for the reason that he has 

not yet " begun to live." * But for him there can 

hardly be any after life. Shall he w r ho has failed here 

be given a better world to fail in once again ? 

"No, no! the energy of life may be 
Kept on after the grave, but not begun." t 

Equally, then, if there be no second life, or if 

there be, the divine word is : "Pitch this one high." % 



(e) But Arnold, the critic, has told us conduct is 
three-fourths of life. Good ; and what is the other 
fourth? Granted that righteousness h rings a great 
inherent bliss with it; still it is not the entire bliss of 
which man is capable. The other fourth of life should 
be put under contribution. 

Suppose that other fourth were culture ? Con- 
duct, and culture? Suppose we unite to the satisfac- 
tion of goodness, the satisfaction of an unsordid play 
of mind and heart on what is beautiful ? Suppose 
the aesthetic compensation for the poverty of life, 
which a little earlier in this paper we found to be of 
itself insufficient, is joined to this ethical compensa- 
tion ? Will not thus a fifth solution of the problem 
of life be found in a combination of second and 



* Kensington Gardens, pp. 285-6. 
t Sonnet. Immortality, p. 173. 
t Sonnet— The Better Part, p. 172. 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 143 

fourth ?* Will not this one be both sentimental, 
then, and rational, both of instinct and of will, of 
moral repression compensated by aesthetic expansion? 
Will it not satisfy the whole being of man, and 
recommend itself more strongly than can any other 
agnostic solution ? 

"Agnostic" solutiou, have we said? Is it "ag- 
nostic?" "We do not know" — well; but we* must 
feel things beyond our ken, says Clough, and so "be- 
lieve ;" we will " feel," and try to be content with 
mere feeling, says Rossetti ; we won't feel any more 
than we know, says Swinburne ; we ought so perfectly 
to engage our feelings w 7 ith what we can know now, 
that we shall be prepared for any thing we may know 



* I have arranged my excerpts from Arnold's Poems so as to 
exhibit in turn four modes of escape from a pessimistic view of 
life, in two pairs, grouped respectively under the two objections 
of the pessimist : 

I. That the self is not sufficient to the self. 

(a) Extend the self by passionate sympathy and great love. 
(6) Extend the self by intellectual sympathy and aesthetic 
expansion, i. e., culture. 

II. That the actual world does not give the self adequate 
scope. 

(c) Repress desires that can not be satisfied (limit demand 
to supply). 

(d) Turn all desires inward, i. e., moral worth. 

Each of these methods has in turn been rejected as not 
adequate or available. I mean here to suggest that a fair view 
of Arnold's own attitude would be 

(e) that " culture " and " moral worth," supplementing one 
another, constitute together a fifth, and reasonably satisfactory 
escape from pessimism for the man whose fortunate lot in life 
makes it available. Personally, I should think it chimerical to 
hope that mankind at large will be able to avail itself of this 
aristocratic method for giving a soul-satisfying significance to life. 



144 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

hereafter, says Arnold — though, since these transcen- 
dental cravings already exist, we should satisfy them 
as best we can with such art or portion of nature as 
symbolizes, and brings into imaginative presence the 
ideal world now absent, aud, for any thing we know, 
nonexistent — perhaps a mere mirage of wilderness 
skies — the creation of imperious thought whose father 
was our wish. 

But what shall we say to this agnostic gospel ? 
Reverting to our introductory discussion, we repeat, 
" agnosticism " has perhaps been too exacting. After 
all, the authority is, as Mr. Swinburne admits, " man's 
own soul." What persists in impressing itself upon 
our truth-faculty is true. The difference between our 
dream world and the world of waking hours is that, 
though the latter passes for us into nothingness during 
sleep, it always reappears afterward more or less self- 
identical, while our dreams are not one, but many. 
A continuous, always consistent dream life, carried 
on through years, would be as real to us as our waking 
existence. 

The only test then of truth is after all life. The 
assumption which alone makes the world intelligible 
I shall assuredly make. The assumption which alone, 
in the long run, makes life worth living for men, they 
will not only allow, but be forced to make. What it 
is to be in the future we can not, with definite cer- 
tainty, pronounce. Conditions that have been press- 
ing on us for ages may change, and the assumptions 
they required become useless and obsolete. 

" Vainly does each, as he glides, 
Fable and dream 
Of the lands which the river of Time . . . 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 145 

Shall reach when his^yesJhave been closed. 

Only the tract where he sails 

He wots of ; only the thoughts, 

Eaised by the objects he passes are his." ?r 

Our business is with man as he now is ; and the 
assumptions required by us to lead our life now with 
a noble courage, rather than be led by it, we assuredly 
should not be so fanatically agnostic as not to venture ! 
Let the future deal with our assumptions as it will 
and must. Our truth concerns us. The truth for the 
future concerns the future. 

If I can live by "the things I see," and find in 
them an efficient cause for my becoming my best self, 
it is well. If not, I must, I ought, I will live by 
" Faith " — that is, confidence in some undemonstrable 
proposition, some working hypothesis. 

Pessimism, if partial and genuine, is an evil that 
cures itself. The present is always of authority. That 
section of the race which really thinks life uot worth 
living will die out in the end, its opinions being an 
evidence of its unfitness to survive. Only what is 
vital, furthers growth, and hastens eventual fruition 
of holiness, loveliness, and bliss can in the long run 
by living men be held true. 

* The Future, p. 288. 



146 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 



IV. THE PROMETHEUS UNBOUND OF SHEL- 
LEY—A DRAMA OF HUMAN" DESTINY. 

1. SHELLEY, REBEL AND REFORMER. 

" Unless wariness is used, as good almost kill a 
man as kill a good book : who kills a man kills a 
reasonable creature, God's image; but he who de- 
stroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the im- 
age of God as it were in the eye. Many a man 
lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the 
precious life blood of a master spirit, embalmed or 
treasured on purpose to a life beyond life." * Such 
words are never too familiar. They always bear re- 
reading. It can hardly be impertinent to quote them 
at the beginning of any critical essay dealing with a 
veritable work of art. They may serve to tune the 
writer's thought, to give him the right pitch of rever- 
ence, to make him remember the humbleness of his 
function — a mere roadside sign-post to urge on weary 
or perplexed wayfarers to conquer the distance be- 
tween themselves and what is beautiful, nobly true, 
and purely good. With what authority, too, do they 
not come from such a stern prophet of righteousness, 
the master-singer of Samson Agonistes, himself the 
blind old giant crushed in the fall of the Philistine 
temple- roof? 

The writer of this paper does not covet the name 
of critic. What, critic? A critic with a theoretic 



J. Milton's Areopagitica. 



SHELLEY, REBEL AND INFORMER. 147 

measuring rod, declaring by how many inches or feet 
the Apollo Belvedere is shorter than, say, his ideal 
kilted highlander ! A critic? Busy comparing in- 
comparables, and able in the end to furnish us little 
more than a substantiation of his own perverse in- 
genuity ? 

£Tor can there be much gained by the historico- 
critical method, so-called. After you have given me 
all the biographic gossip imaginable, how am I nearer 
an understanding of the finished work of art? Does 
it help me to be shown how Faust, for instance, was 
made — piecemeal — and thus to have dispelled forever 
the illusion of organic unity which certainly it was 
the constant object of the artist to produce? You 
may tell me much of the man, but I fancy of his 
work — which is in all probability greater, wiser, and 
better than he — of the honey the bees of God stored 
up in the dead lion's skull — you will not say much (if 
you follow out this historical method) that will help 
me to a more loving appreciation. It seems to me — 
(and why, pray, should one avoid the honest pronoun 
in the first person singular? should not every one 
speak for himself?) — a work of art ought to be treated 
with the same courtesy we accord to a living man. We 
do not venture to put him on the rack, much less to 
vivisect him, with a view to obtaining a more intimate 
acquaintance. We simply let him affect us. If he 
draws out love, then we are willing to love him, and 
are sure that time will confound his detractors. 

What a blessing it is we know nothing of 
Homer, next to nothing of Shakespeare, and so very 
little of Dante Alighieri ! We are able to read their 
works, to see them as they were meant to be seen, 



148 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

as independent creatures endowed with a spirit that 
utters itself through them. What imminent danger 
are we not threatened with, of quite losing our Faust 
in anecdotes and detailed reconstructions from data 
more or less accurate and significant? And is it not 
just possible that our morbid curiosity, our ill-man- 
nered peering into the privacies of Shelley's career, 
may incapacitate us for experiencing that shock every 
inspired work is intended to give ; for receiving his 
prophetic message, because, forsooth, w^e fancy his life 
was not up to his doctrine? And who, pray, will be 
the loser, Shelley or posterity? He has done his 
work. We have ours to do. Our possible depreciation 
of him, is simply our own impoverishment since re- 
sulting in a lessened receptivity on our part for his 
inspiring message, conveyed through self-subsisting 
works of beauty. Optimist, by an inner ineradicable 
conviction, he sought all the time to construct with 
his acute powers of reasoning a speculative system 
that should accord with it, that should promise man- 
kind salvation from all social evils. A rebel, of 
course, he had to be, for those in power believe that 
all is well, and the privileged classes are not eager to 
extend their privileges till they shall become universal 
rights. Like all rebels, he gloried in persecution, 
and tended at first to imagine that the world is divided 
into two hostile camps — angels and devils, reformers 
and their disciples, the foes of reform and their vic- 
tims. Any thing good or bad that tends to preserve 
the false equilibrium of compromise is detested. No 
wonder'the established religion came in for its share 
of hatred. Only by degrees could Shelley transfer his 
hatred from the religion of the Christ to what the 



THE PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 149 

average Englishman had made of it ; only after a 
while was he enabled to draw effectually that dis- 
tinction, which changes a zealous iconoclast into a 
constructive reformer, and which already appears in his 
preface to the Revolt of Islam : " The erroneous and 
degrading idea which men have conceived of a Su- 
preme Being, for instance, is spoken against, but not 
the Supreme Being itself." It is not by any means 
easy, in the heat of conflict or of debate, to speak en- 
thusiastically of what after all is only a possibility, 
and ill, at the very same time, of its actual corruption 
which is sorely felt, and which in the minds of the 
multitude is perpetually mistaken for that good thing 
itself. So it happens that men of one mind appear to 
contradict one another because of their opposite use 
of terms. The one praises an institution, having in 
mind the ideal it should express ; the other, out of 
love for the same ideal, assails it, because it so poorly 
serves its purpose. Some men pass from the negative 
to the positive camp of reformers, and always, of 
course, without changing belief, though their creed 
(that is to say, the verbal expression of their belief) 
has undergone a total change. So the inspired boy of 
Queen Mab became the inspired youth of Laon and 
Cythna, and in due time the inspired man of Prome- 
theus Unbound. 

2. THE PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

One grows sufficiently weary, when assured of 
the inspiration of a work of art by the only possible 
credential — its power to inspire — when, therefore, 
certain of the spiritual mission of Shelley — to have 
constantly set before one a huge "but" in the shape 



150 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

of ugly stories of sexual irregularity and heretical 
views on the matrimonial question. It sounds some- 
what prudish in the devourers of the daily newspaper, 
as Goethe remarked long ago, to lodge any complaint 
against even Byron's Don Juan ; and in the case of Pro- 
metheus Unbound, at all events, the charge is naively 
irrelevant. The book is wholesome, and pure as the 
blue depths of glacier ice above some roaring torrent; 
the lascivious would like the reading of it as little as 
a bath in such a torrent. And in the man * the error 
of his ways was due rather to a theoretic blunder than 
to any natural perversity. Inoculated with the doc- 
trines of William Godwin, and afterward misarguing 
that the liberty inherent in spiritual intercourse should 
be allowed also to characterize the symbolic flesh and 
its relations — reasoning back by a fallacy from the 
nature of the thing signified to the nature of the in- 
adequate sign — it would have required perhaps in 
most men more than one lifetime to convince them- 
selves of their error and to recant. That Shelley re- 
canted we do not mean to insinuate, but, at all events, 
his most glorious works are free from all shadow of 
taint. 

" The expression of those opinions and sentiments 
with regard to human nature and its destiny ; a desire 
to diffuse which was the master passion of his soul," 
as Mrs. Shelley puts the matter rather pathetically in 
her note to the Cenci, was bound to bring him to aban- 
don the epic and romance, and, of course, the drama. 



* Of. " Shelley's Faith," by Kineton Parks, Shelley Society 
Papers, Vol. I, p. 218: " Shelley's life was a life of almost com- 
plete deviation from accepted beliefs, but it was also a life of 
almost absolute adherence to the principles he professed." 



THE PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 151 

" The highest moral purpose aimed at in the highest 
species of the drama is the teaching of the human heart, 
through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowl- 
edge of itself, in proportion to the possession of which 
knowledge every human being is wise, just, sincere, 
tolerant, and kind. If dogmas can do more, it is well : 
but a drama is no fit place for the enforcement of 
them." * One feels quite sure that his well-known ar- 
gument for the moral value of poetry — from the fact 
that imagination is an essential factor in sympathy, 
and that sympathy is the very source of true justice, 
and secret integrity, — must have made clear to his mind 
the didactic power of objective art. But the almost 
Pauline passion — the "woe is me if I preach not" — 
which Mrs. Shelley seems to deplore ; in other words, 
his exalted sense of definite mission and message, 
made him seek a poetic vehicle for the dogmas which 
he modestly suggests may do more than works of art 
without an obvious moral purpose. His prophetic en- 
thusiasm could tolerate no more concreting of the ab- 
stract ideal than would fit it for earnest worship. He 
preferred to indicate rather than to express ; to sym- 
bolize rather than to enflesh the creations of his spirit. 
In all exact form there is an inevitable limitation of 
the manifold possible. Any strictly dramatic embodi- 
ment of a passion or idea has much, of course, besides, 
that is foreign to that mere passion or idea, serving to 
give it rigidity, as the alloy makes the pure gold fit 
for current coin. But on this very account do mytho- 
logical figures, which are not endowed with any de- 
tails of character, convey more than dramatic imper- 
sonations. So the instability of water reflects not 



Shelley's Preface to the Cenei. 



152 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

only the actual moon, but glints of a thousand im- 
aginable moons. Each man, each generation, can de- 
fine the poet's indefinite symbol so as to satisfy pres- 
ent spiritual needs. 

That Shelley should have chosen the Prometheus 
myth was inevitable. The drama of human salvation, 
the idea of purification through suffering, could not 
find a more splendid myth-hero, a more complete po- 
etic expression. To be sure, the story would require 
not a little refashioning; the situation would have to 
be interpreted in a new spirit; but the story and the 
situation could be thus freely treated without any 
shock to religious preconceptions and associations. 
Rightly did Shelley point to the "pernicious casuistry" 
and the possible "something worse" which any treat- 
ment of Satan as a hero must engender. Without a 
doubt, Prometheus, in the handling of ^Eschylus, had 
much the same effect on his contemporaries as the Satan 
of Milton has on us moderns. But Prometheus and 
Jupiter are no longer closely knit with the hopes and 
fears of the race, and it is possible now for a 'poet 
to make them signify whatever he pleases without 
any serious danger of arousing bigoted opposition, or 
of relaxing the beneficent hold of any operative tra- 
dition. 

Mrs. Shelley is surely right when she says that 
even the lyrics of Prometheus Unbound are full of 
occult meanings. "They elude the ordinary reason 
by their abstraction," she adds, "and delicac} 7 of dis- 
tinction, but *they are far from vague. . . . He 
considered these philosophic views of mind and na- 
ture to be instinct w T ith the intensest spirit of poetry." 
"While we may not be gifted with a mind as "subtle 
and penetrating" as Shelley's, if we want to enjoy to 



THE PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 153 

the full his work, we must strive at least to explore 
its source, Mr. Dowden notwithstanding. u Shelley's 
ideas are abstractions made from a one-sided view of 
facts," thinks he, and therefore would he advise the 
critical student to he blind to them, though they stare 
him in the face. One is, of course, glad to agree with 
his opinion that the marvelous witchery of the poem 
was largely due to Shelley's surroundings at the time 
of its composition.* Just what these must have been 
to him we can conclude from the fact that his sublime 
fifty-second stanza of the Adonais is made to end, 
without any consciousness of bathos, with 

" Rome's azure sky, 
Flowers, ruins, statues, . . . are weak 
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak." 

" The bright blue sky of Eome, and the effect of 
the vigorous awakening of spring in the divinest 
climate, and the new life with which it drenches the 
spirit even to intoxication, were the inspiration of this 
drama." f 

Surely we can give these words full weight, with- 
out doubting that certain "ideas," true or false", were 
still more livingly the source of this drama, since 
these outward conditions furnished a perfect allegory 
to the senses of those "ideas" that were always pres- 
ent to the poet, and were only on this very account 
capable of furnishing the inspiration of Prometheus 
Unbound. Nor were the glories of historic ruins in- 
vaded by living nature — the sky and sea of Southern 
Italy — more, after all, to Shelley at work, than the 
colors on his palet. They did not themselves suggest 



* Edward Dowden's Life of P. B. Shelley, Vol. I, p. 263. 
t Shelley's Preface. 



154 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

the method of their combination on the canvas. Be- 
fore the stir of his receptive powers by the baths of 
Caracalla in springtime had occasioned the sympa- 
thetic activity of his creative imagination, we know 
that the faith of the prophet Shelley had already com- 
pelled the poet Shelley to consider the Prometheus 
myth as a good vehicle for his favorite doctrine. 
Wondrous sensations and emotions came opportunely 
from without to furnish the inherently sublime con- 
ception with an opulent beauty, a serene loveliness of 
form. 

To enjoy these is well ; but surely, if viewed as a 
soulless body, they will prove less attractive than if 
we allow them to be animated and organized for us 
by the same spiritual Faith under whose conscious 
control they first came into objective, enjoyable being. 

The "ideas" and the verse are inseparable. If 
the "ideas" are so utterly false, w r e shall have to en- 
joy the Prometheus under perpetual protest, unless we 
have sufficient imagination to suppose them true 
while poring over their utterance. But w r hether sym- 
pathy c or foolishly protestant, we can not be oblivious 
of these "ideas" without losing that which alone 
marshals the verses into one poetic "host invincible" 
— makes of them a "self-existent" organism — a 
"form more real than living man." (Act I, 1. 757.) 

3. PROMETHEUS UNBOUND AND FAUST. 

The comparison which Mr. Dowden institutes 
between Goethe's Faust and Shelley's Prometheus 
need not result disastrously to either. Are not the 
ideas of the first called " far juster and more pro- 
found " merely because their truth is more apparent ? 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND AND FAUST. 155 

" Humanity is no chained Titan of indomitable 
virtue. It is a weak and trembling thing." Is it not 
perhaps both ? " To represent evil as external — the 
tyranny of a malignant God or fortune, or as an in- 
tellectual error — is to falsify the true conception of 
human progress. The progress which indeed con- 
cerns us is that which consists in working out the 
beast." May it not be that these two conceptions of 
evil — as external and as internal — are easily capable 
of reconciliation ? Does not Mr. Dowden himself 
give us the cue, when he goes on to describe man's 
progress in the New Testament phrase as " a growing 
to the fulness of the stature of the perfect man ? " 
" The advance of Faust is from error to truth, from 
weakness to strength," etc. — certainly. So is the 
advance of Prometheus, that is imagined to have 
taken three thousand years. Only Shelley constantly 
views this strength, this truth as already immanent 
in the weakness, in the error; as more real than 
they, if as yet unmanifest and externally inoperative. 
True, man appears a trembling thing and may at last 
grow strong, but if so, because all the " perfect man " 
which is to be evolved in due time is already in- 
volved in his present being. 

It is not, perhaps, so foolish after all to view the 
evil as external; it simply signifies your recognition 
of the good in you, — rudimentary and helpless though 
it be — as that alone which has a right to exist and 
perpetuate itself. JSTot that we want to deceive our- 
selves into thinking that we have no sin.* If you 
affirm the sin inheres in me, is it not that self I am 



1 John, i., 8. 



156 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

bound to deny,* to outlaw, which is dead with 
Christ ?f Is not my life J — the only life I dare dig- 
nify as mine, because it is worthy of a child of heaven 
— "hid " as yet " with Christ in God." § We know 
that, of course, it is not yet made manifest what we 
shall be, 1 1 but we also know that we, are even now the 
sons of God, % and some time must therefore — not 
merely may — be evidently all that such a vital in- 
timacy of relation to God implies.** This, one may 
object, is mystical language. Why, so then is Shel- 
ley's. If it passes in the New Testament, let it pass 
in Prometheus Unbound, even if alloyed now and 
then with premature hazarded speculations. 

" Veil by veil, evil and error fall." — (Act iii., scene ii., line 62.) 
" Foul masks, with which ill thoughts 
Hide that fair being whom we spirits call man." 

— (Act iii., scene iv., line 45.) 

And Shelley chooses to see as the spirits see ; not 

with carnal eye. 

" Where is the beauty, love, and truth, we seek, 
But in our minds ?—( Julian and Maddalo, line 174.) 

We will therefore do well to " search " for " hid- 
den thoughts," " our unexhausted spirits, "ff for only 
there shall we find." the deep things of God." In 
brief, that is to Shelley revelation, which in Faust 
seems attainment. Shelley perceives the divine in 



* cnrapv£o/j,ai=ntter\y to deny, disown, treat as if it were not, 
leave out of reckoning. Matt, xvi., 24; Mk. viii., 34; Lk. 
ix, 23. 

t 2 Cor. v., 14; 1 Cor. xv., 31 ; Gal., ii., 20. 

X Col. iii., 4, and Phil, i., 22. § Col. iii., 3. 

|| 1 J. iii., 2, 3. It 1 J. iii., 2. 

** 2 Pet. i., 4; 1 Cor. xiii., 12 ; J. xvii., 23. 

tt Act iii., sc. iii., 1. 35, Pr. Un. 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND AND FAUST. 157 

the human,* needing only the doffing of the human 
to be visible in holy splendor; Goethe observes the 
process — the center of his horizon in the human — and 
describes sanctification f as a donning of the whole 
armor of God. Both points of view are taken in the 
E"ew Testament ; the vital and the mechanical lan- 
guage are equally admissible to describe this same 
indescribable change from sinner to saint. 

But it would be surely a great mistake to sup- 
pose that Goethe viewed the matter thus mechanically. 
The fact is, since he chose to display in his Faust the 
progress of a soul, and that the source of growth is al- 
ways hidden — all changes seem to be from without — it is 
only by taking the whole progress for granted, placing 
his drama at the moment when Prometheus has al- 
ready " worked out the beast," that Shelley is able to 
make us see the growth in spirituality as a revelation 
of a divine principle, whose presence all along is 
always clearly discerned by the true seer. 

Whether or not Shelley grasped this !N"e\v Testa- 
ment mysticism, is not for us to debate. Only, if it 
can afford an explanation of the language of the Pro- 
metheus Unbound, would it not be pedantic fanaticism 
to insist on ruling it out? Mrs. Shelley was, it would 
seem, conscious of the kinship our poem has to the 
Kew Testament, and it seems strange that Mr. Bage- 
hot % should be so perplexed at rinding, as a matter 



*To reveal His Son in me, Gal. i., 16. Because ye are sons, 
Gal. iv., 6. Now are we the sons of God, 1 J. iii., 2, etc, etc. 

t Put on the new man, Col. hi., 10. Put on the whole armor of 
God, Eph. vi., 11; Rom. xiii., 12; Rom. xiii., 14; Eph. iv., 24; 
1 Thes. v., 8, etc. 

% Literary Studies by Walter Bagehot, Vol. I, p. 115. 



158 MODERN PGET PROPHETS. 

of fact, that Shelley "took extreme delight in the 
Bible as a composition." If indeed " the least biblical 
of poets," he is, at all events, often in close sympathy 
with the utterances of the sermon on the mount, with 
St. John and St. Paul in their theological epistles; 
nor are their echoed phrases few in his verse. 

Men have built sometimes "wiser than they 
knew." Intuitively they have taken possession of 
what their intellect did not surmise existed. 

It is wonderful how little men are disposed to 
grant to Shelley great intellectual power, so utterly 
have they been stunned by his other gifts. And yet, 
had we nothing but his prefaces, we should surely 
marvel at his acuteness, sanity, and far-sighted judg- 
ment. Did he not understand the relations of art to 
civilization, and weigh with wonderful sagacity the 
connection of genius with its age? What of his an- 
ticipation of Mr. Taines' theory : " The mass of capa- 
bilities remains at every period the same; the cir- 
cumstances which awaken it to action perpetually 
change ?" * What of his perception of the power of 
literature to fashion, or rather indicate, the course of 
social history ? " The great writers of our own age 
we have reason to suppose the companions and fore- 
runners of some unimagined change in our social con- 
dition. ... . The equilibrium between institutions 
and opinions is now restoring or is about to be re- 
stored." * And all this at a time when critics took 
for granted that poetry was produced by rules ; that 
gross insults and blatant slander, alternating with 



* Shelley's Preface to Prometheus Unbound. C/". Essay: 
Shelley and Sociology. E. Aveling and E. M. Aveling. Shelley- 
Society Papers, Vol. I, p. 180. 



THE PROMETHEUS UNBOUND, AN ORGANIC WHOLE. 159 

nauseous flattery in the quarterlies, could alter the 
current of literature ; while statesmen fancied the 
policy of repression would change Englishmen into 
tame animals, harnessed to the chariot of their po- 
litical greatness ! 

As a poet, is it not probable that at times he out- 
thought his Godwin — the good man by whom desire 
was calmly set down as a variety of opinion, — substi- 
tuting desire (the hot desire after man's perfection) 
for cold opinion — and may not Shelley have thus 
overtaken other guides more glorious than his worthy 
father-in-law — some father in spirit of New Testament 
fame? And Shelley's "Plato," whom the early 
Christian thinkers of Alexandria loved so much, 
could not, surely, have made it impossible to accept 
half-consciously such guidance. 

4. THE PROMETHEUS UNBOUND, AN ORGANIC WHOLE. 

It is our purpose now to study the Prometheus 
Unbound as a whole and make it yield its own inter- 
pretation; for none can be accepted as satisfactory 
which fails to take account of it as a whole. It would 
seem, therefore, that Mr. Wm. M. Eossetti has not al- 
together solved the difficulty. It was only after care- 
fully considering what he had written that this paper 
was begun, though the materials had been gathered 
for some time. " This matter of the seeret which 
Prometheus can reveal for the preservation of Jupiter, 
as well as the cognate riiatter of the spousals of Jupiter 
and Thetis in Act III, appears to me to derive essen- 
tially from the Greek myth about Zeus and Prome- 
theus, and not from the ideal system, according to 
which Shelley has reconstructed the myth ; I at any 



160 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

rate fail to see what the secret could have been accord- 
ing to the system in question." * Which is the more 
probable — that the system in question has not been 
completely grasped, or that Shelley in this work, 
which he approached so deliberately and at which he 
confesses much arduous labor, should have utterly 
failed to make an artistic whole? Why this crude, 
indigested, foreign matter in the body of the poem? 
Why the chief dramatic scenes thus alien to the pur- 
pose ? What makes a work of art a noble success is 
the complete subserviency of all parts to the organ- 
izing idea ; to have left in the reconstructed myth any 
important elements that are meaningless now, would, 
one must admit, have been to reconstruct it very im- 
perfectly. A theory of interpretation which leaves 
the secret Jupiter wants Prometheus to reveal a silly 
memory from ^Eschylus, and the marriage with Thetis 
of Jupiter a mere opportunity for illustrating the old 
adage, "pride goes before a fall," must be somewhat 
defective; or, granting it to be strictly correct, we 
must capitulate to Shelley's detractors, who claimed 
that he "could not construct a whole," simply allow- 
ing ourselves henceforth to rejoice in the beauty of 
disjointed parts as independent fragments. An effort 
will, however, be made in this paper to suggest such 
slight changes in the usual interpretations of some of 
the dramatic personages as shall allow of the poem's 
consistent unity ; that is to say, we will strive to adapt 
our notion of Shelley's ideal system as held at the 
time he composed his Prometheus Unbound to w T hat 
seem the requirements of the poem's own structure, 



Shelley Society Papers, Vol. I, p. 147. 



THE PROMETHEUS UNBOUND, AN ORGANIC WHOLE. 161 

laying every part of the same under contribution (in 
something like fair proportions to its poetic im- 
portance) for the philosophic and religious exposi- 
tions of the whole. The problems w T hose solution 
concerns us are perplexing enough.* That Prome- 
theus represents the prophetic soul of humanity {cf. 
Act III, sc. i, 1. 5), or, as Mr. Possetti puts it, " the 
mind of man " seems clear beyond a doubt. It is 
only with this understanding of his signification that 
there is nothing hyperbolical in the assertion that 
he gave all that Jupiter has f (Act 1, 1. 273, and 1. 382) ; 
that he gave man civilization (Act I, 1. 54, and Act 
II, sc. iv, 1. 98); that for this he suffered, and that, in 
the nature of the case, his repentance of evil should 
amount to a liberation of himself, and the perfection 
of the race. Only with this meaning is it explicable 
that Prometheus, liberated, would spend his life 
creating and contemplating intellectual and moral 
ideals (Act III, sc. iii, 11. 22-62). 

The meaning of Asia is also quite definite. J A 

* The secret is, of course, without possible meaning, if the 
marriage of Jupiter and Thetis is a mere survival. The main 
object of this paper is, by a particular interpretation of Denio- 
gorgon, to give the marriage a real importance, esoteric as well as 
dramatic, and the secret would then be, as in the Greek work, the 
direfulness of this marriage which Jupiter looks upon as for- 
tunate. 

t Cf. Act II, sc. iv, 1. 44. 

t Asia is the " glory unbeheld " ( Act II, sc. v, 1. 60) ; the "golden 
chalice" to the " bright wine" of Prometheus' love, " which else had 
sunk into the thirsty dust." (Act 1, 1. 820.) Her " presence " makes 
her prison beautiful, but, though separated from him, if she would 
cease, "fade" into nothing "were it not" for Prometheus, the 
soul of man. (Act I, 1. 841.) Her " desire " is " harmonizing 



162 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

pupil of Godwin could not possibly have viewed the 
emotive nature as other than the intellect. But 
were such an a priori ground insufficient, we have 
Shelley's own analysis of " thought," as he conceived 
the term, into subordinate terms : "Thought . . . 
and its quick elements, will, passion, reason, imagina- 
tion," * which would show the emotive nature of man 
to be comprised already in Prometheus, the else con- 
venient hyphothesis, therefore, that Asia stands for 
Love, and her sisters for Hope and Faith, can not be 
accepted. She is not Love so much as the Loveable, 
that which kindles Love. Mrs. Shelley says she is 
Nature ; Nature, that is to say, in her potential beauty ; 
the dream of the physical world's glory that arose 
from the calm deep seas as they mirrored the calmer 
deeper heavens. Pauthea declares that 

"love, like the atmosphere 
Of the sun's fire filling the living world, 
Burst from Iter and illumined earth and heaven 
And the deep ocean, and the sunless caves 
And all that dwells within them." ( Act III, sc. v, 1. 20.) 



this earth with what we feel above " (Act III, sc. v, 1. 95), namely, 
with herself. 

" It is true that the sensitive organization of Shelley, shrink- 
ing from the rough contact with reality, never quite looked Nature 
in the face; and in the west wind and sunset cloud, in running 
stream and fragrant flower, he recognized a more benignant 
manifestation of power than that which he saw in the social state 
of man, because what he saw reflected by these passive phe- 
nomena was in reality the shade of his own soul, and his own 
soul, being one of the loveliest as well as loftiest that ever passed 
across the stage of the world, transmuted the visible universe to 
something after its own likeness." — " Shelley's View of Nature," 
etc., by Mathilde Blind, printed among the Shelley Society Papers. 
* Speech of Ahasuerus in "Hellas." 



PROMETHEUS BOUND. 163 

Asia is not love,* though by her beauty the direct 
source of it ; and, since she is seen in all, causes love 
to irradiate all. 

The mind of man, married to nature, separated, 
reunited, is then the theme of the whole poem. But 
our problem lies in the significance of Jupiter and 
particularly of Demogorgon. 

5. PROMETHEUS BOUND. 

Before we address ourselves seriously to the solu- 
tion of the principal enigmas (1) just what Demo- 
gorgon must signify in order to play in reality the part 
which he does in the plot of the poem, and (2) why 
that part is played, whether at the solicitation of Asia, 
or by some eternal fate, or by some spiritual neces- 
sitation immanent in Prometheus himself (else how 
shah he realize his ideal of being not the " saved, 7 ' but 
the "savior") ? Before we launch into these seas of 
difficult speculation, though guided all the while by 
the words of the poem itself, it will be, no doubt, ad- 
visable to take a glance at Prometheus and Jupiter 
as they are sketched by Aeschylus of old, against 
whose solution Shelley protests so strongly in his 
preface, and from whose understanding of what con- 
stitutes the sublimest virtue, he differs toto coslo. 

In a paragraph or two, it will be easy to sum- 
marize their chief characteristics. There is in the 
poem of Aeschylus a reverence for Zeus (doubtless 
sincere enough, but not at all akin to esteem), which 
clashes sorely with the sympathy accorded to his foe 
and victim. Sin is viewed politically. It is simply 



See i note, p. 161. 



164 MODEBN POET PROPHETS. 

resistance to " whoso rules." Hence Prometheus 
says, without sign of shame or contrition : 

" I have known 
All in prevision. By my choice, my choice 
I freely sinned— I will confess my sin — 
And helping mortals, found mine own despair." (1. 313.) * 

He defies penalty — a dreader visitation of woe 
than death : — 

" Why let him do it ! I am here prepared 
For all things and their pangs." (1. 1111.) 

The wrong he complains of is a too severe punish- 
ment for his offense; indeed, the base ingratitude of 
Zeus in failing to balance the offense against former 
service rendered, and so to remit all otherwise de- 
served penalty. He hates Zens ; does not fear him, 
nor reverence him. Against the unwilling servants 
of Zeus he harbors no malice, but scorns them : 

" I would not barter . . . 
My suffering for thy service. I maintain 
It is a nobler thing to serve these rocks 
Than live a faithful slave to father Zeus." (1. 1247.) 

He has sjmipathy for his fellow Titans, and to 
Oceanus, — who is still left his old free deity and sway, 
— not surely without some latent contempt, he says : 

" I gratulate thee, who hast shared and dared 
All things with me, except their penalty." (1. 388.) 

He is willing to receive sympathy : 

" Think not I am silent thus 
Through pride or scorn," (1. 505.) 

though he has "done with wail" for his "own 
griefs " (1. 719), and if he grieves, he does " not there- 
fore wish to multiply the griefs of others." (1. 404.) 



* References are to Mrs. Browning's Prometheus Bound. 



PROMETHEUS BOUND. 165 

" Upon scorners," be " retorts their scorn " (1. 150); for 
Zeus he can fancy no fall worse than one "lower than 
patience'' (1. 1091), and in himself strengthens his 
pride with a fierce spirit of defiance, so that he him- 
self may endure the unendurable. His comfort is in 
the absoluteness of Fate : 

" Necessity doth front the universe 
With an invincible gesture," (1. 117), 

which, though "stronger than his art" (1. 582), is 
stronger also than his foe, whose fall he foresees, 
gloating over the thought that 

"Zeus 
Precipitated thus, shall learn at length 
The difference betwixt rule and servitude." (1. 1101.) 

Hence, by anticipation, he shouts to the pusil- 
lanimous chorus : 

" Eeverence thou, 
Adore thou, flatter thou, whomever reigns, 
Whenever reigning ! But for me, your Zeus 
Is less than nothing." (1. 1113.) 

However, contempt for Jupiter, and stoic superi- 
ority to torture, do not prevent his desiring a covenant 
with his foe. He speaks of a time when Zeus, hum- 
bled, 

" shall rush on in fear to meet with me 
Who rush to meet with him in agony, 
To issues of harmonious covenant." (1. 231.) 

He will keep his fatal secret, because, 

" By that same secret kept 
I 'scape this chain's dishonor and its woe." (1. 593.) 

And he assures Hermes : 

" No tortures from his hand 
Xor any machination in the world 
Shall force mine utterance, ere he loose himself 
These cankerous fetters from me " (1. 1174), 



166 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

implying a willingness to speak the words Zeus wants 
to hear, and which can alone confirm him in his celes- 
tial tyranny, if thus personally released and restored 
to honor. Of course, since he owes no service, — any 
possible debt to Zeus being more than canceled by in- 
gratitude and extreme cruelty, as he ironically re- 
marks to Hermes, — he will, of course, not " supplicate 
him . . . with feminine upliftings of 
hands, to break these chains." (1. 1192.) 

The picture of Zeus is sufficiently lurid. As a 
" new-made king," he is declared by Hephaestus to be 
"cruel." (1. 39.) He "metes his justice by his will" 
(1. 227), is Prometheus' judgment. Oceanus speaks of 
him as " reigning by cruelty, instead of right." (1. 381.) 
The chorus considers him " stern and cold," " whose law 
is taken from his breast" (1. 467), and Hermes assures 
Prometheus that he is wont to persuade by force : 

;( Behold, 
Unless ray words persuade thee, what a blast 
And whirlwind of inevitable woe 
Must sweep persuasion through thee" (1. 1202), 

and as his authorized mouthpiece and messenger 
declares the fortitude of Prometheus mere obstinacy 
and indulgence of " self-will." (1. 1227.) Strength, 
the willing slave of Zeus, warns Hephsestos of the 
danger of sympathizing with the victim of the 
tyrant's wrath : 

" Beware lest thine own pity find thee out ; (1. 75.) 
whilst Hermes considers such sympathy nothing 
short of " madness." (1. 1273.) 

One wonders how an orthodox Athenean could 
endure for one minute such a lively portraiture of the 
Olympian Father ! 



shelley's philosophy. 167 

Is it surprising that Shelley " shrank from a 
catastrophe so feeble as that of reconciling the cham- 
pion with the oppressor of mankind? " 

6. shelley's philosophy. 
Let us now proceed to give ourselves some ac- 
count of that " system of ideas," as Mr. Rossetti hap- 
pily puts it, which Shelley held to be true at this 
period of his life. He was a thorough-going sub- 
jective idealist. From the first two speeches of 
Ahasuerus, in the lyrical drama " Hellas," we can 
cull words which will accurately define his position : 

" This whole . . . 
Is but a vision ; . . . 
Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor less 
The future and the past are idle shadows 
Of thought's eternal flight — they have no being ; 
Nought is but that it feels itself to be." 
" Thought . . . 
Alone . . . can not die. . . . 
The stuff whence mentality can^weave 
All that it hath dominion o'er . . . 

What has thought 
To do with time or place, or circumstance?" 

That this philosophy was also held at the time of 

the composition of the Prometheus, apart from the 

general spirit and tendency of the poem, such lines as 

these suffice to prove : 

" Thought . . is the measure of the universe." 

—(Act II, sc. iv, 1. 72.) 

The mind of the beholder is viewed as the source 
of the objective being of things : 

"Apparitions, dim at first, 
Then radiant, as the mind . . . casts on them 
The gathered rays which are reality." 

—(Act. Ill, sc. iii, 1. 49.) 



168 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

From this it results, of course, that in the 
strictest philosophical view of Shelley the whole 
drama of human salvation takes place both in its sub- 
jective and in its ostensibly objective parts within the 
mind of man, which is Prometheus ; so that all the 
dramatis personae of the poem are really moods or 
activities of Prometheus, projected upon the blank 
screen of the unknowable, and his semi-personal rela- 
tions to these projections represent everlasting facts of 
his own abysmal being. 

Now, let us deduce an ethic from this meta- 
physic, assuming it to be true for the nonce. Thought 
— and its living elements, will, passion, reason, imagi- 
nation — is the framer and orderer and sustainer of the 
universe ; what thought feels itself to be alone is ; 
then surely evil, in every sense, is not necessarily real 
to the individual, much less to the race. And here 
it is well to observe that Shelley utterly destroys the 
basis of both egoism and altruism : 

" Talk no more 
Of thee and me, . . . 

But look on that which can not change, the One, 
The unborn and the undying." * 

"All is contained in each." * 

It is absorption in this One, or more correctly — 
since the cessation of consciousness were the cessa- 
tion of being, according to Shelley ; and Adonais, for 
instance, is said still to be, though now absorbed, and 
" doth bear his part, while the One Spirit's plastic 
stress sweeps through the dull sense world ;" (Ado- 
nais, st. 43.) — it is conscious union and spontaneous 



* Speech of Ahasuerus, " Hellas." 



shelley's philosophy. 169 

co-operation with this One which constitutes the goal 
of being.* 

" The One remains, the many change and pass." — ( Adonais, st. 52.) 

The true course for man is therefore to anticipate, 
while yet in the flesh, this conscious union with " all," 
(whereby they cease to be " many" and so exposed to 
the evils of change and chance), by a living energetic 
sympathy, which Shelley calls "true love," to dis- 
tinguish it from sensual or sentimental affections that 
" profane " the " word." For true love is not merely 

" The desire of the moth for the star, 
Of the night for the morrow, 
The devotion to something afar 

From the sphere of our sorrow ; " 

-(To .) 

but also, or rather, the power that produces, accord- 
ing to eternal laws, a " kingdom of heaven on earth." 

" If you divide suffering and dross, you may 
Diminish till it is consumed away ; 
If you divide pleasure and love and thought, 
Each part exceeds the whole ; and we know not 
How much, while any yet remains unshared, 
Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared." 

— (Epipsychidion, 1. 181.) 

Now, if evil can for the mere individual, exposed 
to change and chance and death, by an attitude of his 
single mind, refusing to recognize evil, by an authori- 
tative denial, a destructive lightning bolt of whole- 
some will, be annihilated for him, how much more 
certainly can all evil be overcome by the joint fiat of 
mankind creating a new world of ideal beauty? No 
wonder, then, we find in Prometheus such lines as 



* See Appendix, for a discussion on the meaning of "Annihila- 
tion " in Shelley's poetry." 



170 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

" Man . . . free from guilt or pain 
Which were for his will made or suffered them." 

—(Act III, sc. iv, 1. 197.) 
Man has been " driven on the wreck of his own 
will." (Act II, sc. iv, 1. 104.) He is a slave, not be- 
cause he is by nature such, but because " all spirits are 
enslaved which serve things evil." (Act II, sc. iv, 
1. 110.) And even such a state is not hopeless. 

" This is not destiny, but man's own willful ill." 

(Julian and Maddalo, 1. 214.) 

We, in particular, as individuals, have also some 

blame for our prostrate condition, and therefore should 

arouse ourselves : 

" It is our will 
Which thus enchains us to permitted ill. 
We might be otherwise ; we might be all 
We dream of, happy, high, majestical." 

— (J. & M., 1. 174.) 

To change this " will " may seem difficult, involv- 
ing much strain; it may, indeed, entail martyrdom, 
but the chances are worth taking, for the present con- 
dition is to the sensitive soul aware of 

"The else-unfelt oppressions of this earth." 

(J. &M., 1.459.) 
the worst imaginable condition, and 

" We know 
That we have power over ourselves to do, 
And suffer — what, we know not till we try." 

—(J. & M., 1. 188.) 

In fact, so tremendous is the power of the indi- 
vidual soul that 

"Evil minds 
Change good to their own nature." 

—(Act I, sc. i, 1. 389, Pr. Un.) 

Man's moral salvation is seen, then, to be an es- 
sentially spiritual process ; the battle against evil is 



PROMETHEUS. 171 

a battle against self; the kingdom of heaven is (so far 
as it ever will have objective being) actually at hand, 
within reach. In some fabulous golden age, man was 
sinless through ignorance ; if man, having " eaten of 
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," is now 
to be redeemed from evil, he has somehow come to 
know that this redemption must be wrought by wis- 
dom, i. e., the faith, passing into experimental knowl- 
edge, that good alone is, that evil seems, which wis- 
dom can only be gained for man by the suffering that 
ends in revealing to him his own superiority to suffer- 
ing, and therefore his independence of regnant evil. 
Having dared to suffer the uttermost, evil may be 
"monarch of all spirits," but not of his whose 
" agony" is " the barrier" to the " else all-conquering 
foe" (Act I, 1. 119), and now that — when Shelley's 
drama opens — misery has made " Prometheus wise " 
(Act I, 1. 58), "aught evil wish is dead within" 
(Id., 1. 70), and " no memory " even remains " of what 
is hate" (Id., 1. 71), the Godlike has come to conscious 
mastery in him. 

7. PROMETHEUS. 

In a sense, of course, Prometheus represents the 
individual man who is living " in the spirit of this 
creed," * though he is rather the soul of mankind, of 
the race viewed as one, — the human Soul, which is 
" parceled out " in souls. It is by substituting this, in a 
measure equivalent conception, for the larger one, that 
the drama gets what solidity it has with the reader, 
And this substitution is legitimate since (the less 

* Wordsworth's Ode to Duty. 



172 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

standing for the greater) it readily, as one muses over 
the drama, fades into a symbol, and then brightens 
again divinely in the mind as the thing symbolized — 
the one Soul of the race, one with that of the universe, 
to become consciously one with which, is 

". . . the death lovers love 
Living in what they sought." 

—(The Boat on the Serchio, 1. 80.) 

Now, when one views Prometheus merely as the 
individual man defiant of evil " power, which seems 
omnipotent," (Act IV, 1. 572) as the reformer and 
helper of men, it is clear that he must suffer at the 
hands of his fellows. It is as one would suppose. 
Possession is with the masses not nine but all the 
ten points of the law. What seems, not only has a 
right to be, but must continue to be and seem. So 
the would-be redeemer of himself and others is in all 
appearance a criminal. His doom is certain from 
the beginning. He desires a change in what the peo- 
ple say is ; if he says it only seems they declare him 
mad ; if he says it must cease to seem they declare him 
an enemy of society ; for what the unspiritual think 
is, they also think is right. 

Prometheus, however, is not an atheist though 
he is an iconoclast. The distinction between God 
(the source of our existence) and our conception of 
God (the source of our thoughts of him and our con- 
duct toward him) must be made. Shelley himself 
makes it as early as the note to the line in Queen 
Mab, declaring, " There is no God ?" He makes it 
again in stanzas 27, 28, of the First Canto of Laon 
and Cythna. He refers to it in the preface to that 
poem as above quoted. So Prometheus makes the 



PROMETHEUS. 173 

clear distinction that is indicated by Demogorgon in 
his answer to Asia: "I spoke but as ye speak" 
(Act II, sc. iv, 1. 112). Men's conceptions of God are 
often so inadequate as to constitute the great barrier 
forbidding access to Him 

" Who shaped us to his ends and not our own," 

to the One who rises day by day to teach 

" What none yet ever knew." 

—(The Boat on the Serchio, 11. 30-34.) 

So, of course, also in the moral and political 
sphere what men think " right " signifies, and what 
men think " happy " signifies, is the obstacle that 
must be removed or overleapt if right is to be reached 
and happiness to reign. But the masses can not or will 
not make this great distinction. Prometheus is there- 
fore to them an anarchist, a blasphemous, Godless, im- 
moral, wicked wretch, who must be done to death 
with the most ingenious devices that will torture life 
out of the body by exquisite degrees. 

" Pangs pass 
Slow, ever-moving, making moments be 
. . . each an immortality !" 

— (J. and M., 1. 426.) 

And why do the masses feel such senseless rage 
against Prometheus ? They have invested what were 
once the means with all the sanctity of the end 
which they no more subserve. To attack these 
means; to declare them worthless, nay, an impedi- 
ment, is to impugn the everlasting value of the end. 
So they deem. Men's notions of what w T ill bring them 
to the good, they externalize in laws, literatures, 
rituals, governments. These need perpetual develop- 
ment if they are to continue expressive of the ever- 



174 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

advancing mind of man, if they are to be operative 
for good on coming generations. But these, since 
visible and tangible, are more real to the masses than 
the spiritual revelation of God, good, and happiness, 
which is ever alive and growing, yet neither directly 
visible nor tangible. So, the attempt to quicken now 
useless institutions by change, is construed as an as- 
sault with intent to kill ! 

" Where is the beauty, love, and truth we seek, 
But in our minds ? and, if we were not weak, 
Should we be less in deed than in desire. ?" 

—(J. and M., 1. 178.) 

In other words, can institutions be allowed to lag 
behind our convictions ? If they do, are they not a 
hindrance, a positive evil? Is it not well to show 
them such, by letting them slay the righteous and holy 
reformer ? Will not, then, the claims of those who 
confound means with ends, and what is worse obso- 
lete means with everlasting ends, be proved absurd? 
Thus is the individual justified in dying for his Utopia, 
because by so dying he brings it from the clouds of 
glorious dreams into the world of solid living fact. It 
is, however, not as an individual hero, but as a per- 
sonification of the general human soul that he " works 
out his salvation " and that of the world. And surely it 
is a satisfaction to quote Mr. Rossetti : "I quite dissent 
from those ... who consider that the Titan is 
unchained from a rock, and then, without why or 
wherefore, like a transformation-scene in a panto- 
mime, the human race changes into a quasi-angelic 
race." * . . . " If w r e do not fix our notion (to 



* Shelley Society Papers, Vol. I, p. 141. 



THE STORY OP PROMETHEUS. 175 

use the common phrase) ' of what it is all about,' we 
shall be hardly able to appreciate its character as a 
poem and work of art." * 

He then gives us as the " argument :" 

" The power of man ... to turn his earth 

into an approximate hell ; and his power likewise, if 

he so wills it, by a gradual but energetic change of 

spirit to turn his earth into an approximate heaven." * 

8. THE STORY 0E PROMETHEUS. 

We will now attempt to solve the second of the two 
enigmas we propounded to ourselves before we took 
a hurried glance at the Prometheus Bound, namely, 
"how and why does Demogorgon play his part?" 
which is really a portion of the larger question, "how 
and why is Prometheus delivered and made perfect?" 
Let us then trace Prometheus' history. He is the son 
of Themis, but not as "law.' 

" My mother . . . 
Who is called not only Themis but Earth too, 
Her single beauty joys in many names." 

— (Pr. B., 1. 252.) 

It is as the "Earth," the "mother of all living," 
that she alone appears in the Prometheus Unbound. 
He is the son, therefore, of the earth, "without father 
bred," so far as we know. He loves men. We gather 
that if he did not make them, yet he superintended 
their making. He finds them denied 

" The birthright of their beiug : knowledge, power, 
The skill which wields the elements, the thought 
Which pierces this dim universe like light, 
Self-empire, and the majesty of love ; 
For thirst of which they fainted." — (Act II, sc. iv, 1. 38.) 

* Shelley Society Papers,' Vol. I, p. 144. 



176 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

He resolved to help them. J apiter, the ambitious 
son of God Saturn (not then ill-disposed to man, we 
infer, or Prometheus had been grievously lacking in 
insight and foresight), is given the "dominion of wide 
heaven" in his father's stead, on condition that "man 
be free," i. e., get his birthright. 

Man is to rise out of a life of mere animalism, 
measured by the revolutions of the earth (time=Sat- 
urn), and "to become a sharer in that timeless life of 
the gods, the life of thought — "for what has thought* 
to clo with time?" But Jupiter — mean he what he 
may — once master, fails to fulfill his pledge; on the 
contrary, he changes the negative misery of man into 
a fearful thraldom. 

" Into their desert hearts fierce wants he sent, 
And mad disquietudes, and shadows idle 
Of unreal good which levied mutual war." 

— (Act II, sc. iv, 1. 55.) 

The Titan, in his quick sympathy, gave men the 
hopes — perfumes, as it were, of the "Elysian flowers," 
Nepenthe, oblivion of ill (as antidote to remorse and 
despair) ; Moly, spiritual vision (as antidote to sensu- 
ality) ; and Amaranth, "intimations of immortality" 
(as antidote to frantic rebellion, since the source of the 
sweet peace that comes with resignation). Nor did he 
confine himself to negative blessings. Love, to unite 
men in societies; fire, which, as an extension of their 
bodies, should toil for them; speech, making them in- 
tellectually one, and giving thought precision; science, 
or rather, that intuitive insight into Nature's deepest 
secrets which became an occult tradition in myths; 



* One must always bear in mind how much "thought" is 
made to comprise : — passion, imagination, reason, will. 



THE STORY OF PROMETHEUS. 177 

poetry, which, by its sound-harmonies and thought- 
harmonies, prophecies man's perfection: music, to 
" Lift up the listening spirit 
Until it walked exempt from mortal care, 
Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound," 

—(Act II, sc. iv, 1. 79) ; 

statuary, the ideal of man's glorified body ; the art of 

healing, or helping the present marred body to some 

little part of its healthy glory; astronomy, the freedom 

of the seas, and a larger conception not only of the 

earth, but of the universe; commerce, made possible by 

shipping, so mastering space; cities, associations of 

men for the production of the loftiest culture. 

" Such alleviations of his state Prometheus gave to man." 

—(Id., 1. 98.) 

In punishment wherefor, he is chained in Caucasus 
for everlasting torments. 

At his feet are two sea nymphs, sometimes asleep 
in one another's arms, dreaming dreams of his release, 
which doubtless he feels stealing over him as some 
silvery mist that creeps up the forested hillsides ; at 
other times, actively comforting him with w T ords of 
love.* Far away is the bride of his whole being, 
Asia, glorious elder sister of these sea nymphs, whom 
now he can communicate with only through "her. 
shadow" (Act II, sc. i, 1. 70), Panthea. 

When first chained, he uttered a curse — that is to 
say, a prayer for his enemy's ruin — wmich can be sum- 
marized in two lines: "Heap on thy soul ... ill 
deeds; then be thou damned beholding good" Act 1, 1. 
292) — that is to say, Be thyself utterly and know thy- 



* See Appendix, for a note on the meaning of lone and 
Panthea. 



178 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

self; and "Let the hour come when thou must appear 
to be That which thou art internally " (Act 1, 1. 299)— 
that is to say, Seem utterly what thou art. No nobler 
prayer could be offered up for the good man ; but 
what is heaven to him is hell to the wicked. Hearing 
his curse, which he had forgotten (not gloating over 
it, as the Prometheus of ^Eschylus would), he declared 
"it doth repent me" (Act I, 1. 203) ; " grief far a while 
is blind, and so was mine" (1. 204); but he is now 
"king over" himself (1. 492); he has learned in his 
agonies "to wish no living thing to suffer pain" (1. 
205), and so recalls his curse. Consternation follows. 
All that love him and depend upon him believe him 
conquered. He is really conqueror. Jupiter hiniself 
declares: "Gentle and just and dreadless, is he not the 
monarch of the world?" (Act III, sc. i, 1. 68.) He 
is the form, " wisdom, courage, and long-suffering 
love" "animate." (1. 135.) He is "firm, not proud" 
(Act I, 1. 237), and therefore he recants. He is no 
nearer to submission; he will not "flatter crime." 
(1. 401.) But he understands what the actual damna- 
tion of Jupiter is. He "can receive no good" (1. 389). 
Therefore Prometheus has only " pity " for him 
now. (1. 429.) His tortures at the hand of Jupi- 
ter he fulty understands. "He but requites me for 
his own misdeed." (1. 392.) All which torture has 
only served to perfect him, to substitute for the un- 
quenchable laughter of the gods the diviner "smile" 
of the "King of Sadness" (Act I, 1. 780), with whom, 
in the words of Byron, all torture is "tributary to 
his will."* 



An interesting comparison might be instituted between the 



THE STORY OF PROMETHEUS. 179 

Now, no sooner has he vanquished the evil pas- 
sion for retaliation, than his extreme temptation 
comes. Can he retain his confidence in the real om- 
nipotence of good, in the face of the full display of 
the apparent dominion of evil ? The Furies insinuate : 
Thou gavest men knowledge (Act I, 1. 541), and thence 
have come "hope, love, doubt, and desire," a "thirst 
of fierce fever." (1. 543.) What is the use of religion 
and moral reform? Did not the mission of Jesus, of 
"gentle worth" (1. 545), fail grievously? Is he not 
now "wailing for the faith he kindled?" (1. 555.) 
What is the use of political reform ? Did not France 
dedicate herself to truth, freedom, and love? What 
came of her brave folly? Was she not suffocated in 
a bath of reeking gore? (1. 571.) What is the use 
of living and dying for men? Again Jesus illustrates 
the absurdity of such a course. The cross is what 
men give to those who live for them, and a worship 
worse than execration to those who die for them. 
"Hath not his name become a curse?" (1. 602.) His 
followers have misunderstood, and only make his gos- 
pel of peace and brotherly love an excuse for fanatical 
hate to all who are really like in mind and heart to 
him whom they traduce by calling Lord. (1. 606.) In 
conclusion, nothing is reasonable but utter disbelief in 
good as a possibility on earth. The right-minded are 
spell-bound by conventionalism or craven terror — 
"unable to devise new good." (1.622.) The kindly 
"want power" (1. 624), and give mere sentimental 
sympathy, which amounts to self-pity, because of the 



firmness of Prometheus — gentle, pitiful— and the stubborn, heart- 
less, Satanic pride of Manfred. See Appendix. 



180 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

painfulness of witnessing pain. {Cf. 1. 410.) The 
"powerful" want "goodness" (1. 625), for their own 
eternal selves a far worse lack. The " wise " in devices 
want "love," to put them into practice. (1. 626.) 
Those "who love want wisdom," and by their frantic 
blundering only bring ridicule upon themselves, and 
more oppression on those they would relieve. Last 
of all, the " would-be just" are unfeeling and unaware 
that others feel, so that their justice is indistinguish- 
able from its opposite, selfish violence. "All best 
things are thus confused to ill." (1. 627.) 

But instead of relinquishing his trust in good, as 
before he pitied the self-despising slaves of Heaven 
(1. 429) ;* and for the furies who " exult" in their " de- 
formity" (1. 464), whose "element" is "hate" as his 
is " pain " (1. 477) he has also pity : 

" I weigh not what he do, but what ye suffer 
Being evil;" (1.480.) 

so now he merely pities those whom these "snakes" 
"torture not" (1. 632). The last fury vanishes 
baffled, and Prometheus perceives that this torment, 
"though dread revenge" on the part of Jupiter, is 
not his " victory : " 

" This is defeat, fierce king ! 
The sights with which thou torturest and gird my soul 
With new endurance, till the hour arrives 
When they shall be no types of things which are." 

— (1.641.) 

Then come the " angels," f the good " spirits " 



* Cf. with false pity of Mercury in preceding line : "I won- 
der at yet pity thee." Also 1. 263 and 1. 410. 

t Cf. After the temptation of Jesus. Mat. iv, 11, and Mk. i, 13. 
Also Lk. xxii, 43 (though not of certain authority), after the 



ELEMENTS OF SALVATION. 181 

from the " caves of human thought " (1. 658), intuitions 
of obscure origin, the self-assertion o'f divine instincts 
from the subconscious mind of man, that cause to 
emerge in consciousness "such truths" of which 
" each to itself must be the oracle " (Act II, sc. iv, 1. 
123) self-witnessing truths, of unique certainty, though 
only isolated facts can substantiate as yet their wit- 
ness, and to which any appeal for proof were idle. 
Enlightenment, self-sacrifice, philosophico-political 
idealism, art power (" fashioning forms more real 
than living man." Act. I, 1. 738), love, hope — these 
by turns separately manifest in a few, speak eloquently 
of their joint possession by all in times to come. And 
their chorus sing a paean to the " soul of man : " 

" Wisdom, justice, love, and peace, 
When they struggle to increase 
Are to us . . . the prophecy 
Which begins and ends in Thee.'" (1. 805.) 

Then Prometheus, comforted, sees clearly, what 
he has glimpsed before again and again, that " most 
vain" is " all hope but love" (1. 87). 

9. ELEMENTS OF SALVATION. 

Prometheus from this point on has nothing to do. 
The second act is Asia's ; the third is Demogorgon's 
and the Spirit of the Hour's; in the fourth — which is, 
strictly speaking, no act, but a chant in his honor — 
he does not even appear. But this inactivity or even 
absence from the poetic stage is because really he has 
done his part, and that he himself, in a sense, is the 



temptation in the Garden of Gethsemane. So the Lord, or rather 
the angel of the Lord, appears to Job. (Job xl, 6.) 



182 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

stage on which all that others do is transacted. Let 
us now state categorically what, according to the 
poem is requisite for the liberation and perfection of 
the soul of man. 

(1) He must overcome that vindictive passion mis- 
called the desire for just retribution. He must learn 
that two wrongs do not, and can not make a right; 
that violence only breeds violence; and that it is not 
a triumph over the evil one if we become infected 
with just what we despise in him, i. e., if we let his 
conduct toward us serve as a criterion, to any extent, 
for oar conduct toward him. We have Shelley's 
views in plain prose * upon this matter: "Un- 
doubtedly, no person can be truly dishonored by the 
act of another; and the tit return to make to the 
most enormous injuries is kindness and forbearance, 
and a resolution to convert the injurer from his dark 
passions by peace and love."f In short, Prometheus 
must extirpate the evil in him which the evil without 
has engendered or fostered. This he has done. He 
has overcome. 



* In his preface to the Cenci, speaking of Beatrice: "Cer- 
tainly an extreme application of the doctrine of non-resistance." 

t " Resist not Him that is ev.il," etc. (Mat. v, 39), but " Over- 
come evil with good" (Rom. xii, 21). "Love your enemies" 
(Mat. v, 44). " If ye suffer for righteousness sake, happy are ye ! " 
(I Pet. iii, 14, and Mat. v, 10). St. Paul assumes that this doc- 
trine is, as a matter of fact, put in practice by the Corinthian 
Christians: "Ye bear with the foolish gladly, being wise your- 
selves. For ye bear with a man, if he bringeth you into bondage, 
if he devoureth you, if he taketh you captive, or he exalteth him- 
self, if he smiteth you on the face." (II Co. xi, 19, 20). " Father, 
forgive them, for they know not what they do," prayed Jesus 
(Lk. xxiii, 34), and St. Stephen cried, when being stoned, " Lord, 
lay not this sin to their charge " (Acts vii, 60). " When he suf- 



ELEMENTS OF SALVATION. 183 

(2) Asia, man's ideal of nature, must seek for him 
from inscrutible Eternity the solution of the enigmas 
of life and doom. He must learn that he " who reigns " 
is not "God." God never "reigns" (i. e : compels 
the natures of men and things to his private will which 
has in view his own particular good). God is spirit, 
and "pleads," "serves," "loves" (i. e: is in each that 
will which seeks particular perfection with and in the 
perfection of all that are). (Act II, sc. iv.) He needs 
to know that, as a matter of fact, not only for himself 
in his subjective experience, but also in the universe 
at large for one who knows it through and through: 

"All things are subject but eternal Love." 

—(Act II, sc. iv, 1. 120.) 

(3) He needs an external power — since he will 
not, by being that power, fall from ideal self-control, 
or rather self-oblivion — an incarnation* of the eter- 
nal energy to dethrone objective evil; to dissolve those 
gods, laws and institutions which were good, but are 
stages of good left behind, and therefore evil now. For, 
be it well remembered, not in folly, but in wise prevision 
was the empire of Jupiter founded on " eldest faith " 
(tradition) and " hell's coeval fear " (self-love) (Act 
III, sc. i, 1. 10) by Prometheus himself who "gave" 
him " wisdom, which is strength " (Act II, sc. iv, 1. 
44), on condition " that man be free ;" which he puts 
elsewhere more personally, identifying his own will's 
freedom with that of man : 



fered, he threatened not, etc., but committed his cause to Him 
who judgeth righteously" (I Pet. ii, 23), for "the wrath of man 
worketh not the righteousness of God." (Jas. i, 20). 

* Act III, sc. i, 1. 46, " Waiting the incarnation which ascends 
. . from Demogorgon's throne." (1. 20-24, Id.) 



184 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

" O'er all things, but thyself, I gave thee power, 
And my own will."— —(Act I, 1. 273.) 

(4) He needs Hercules to break the fetters of evil 
custom from his body. He is cured within, but his 
" members" war against the "law of his mind." * They 
refuse obedience. In other words, "might" (Her- 
cules) in the service of " wrong " has made it pass for 
"right;" while "right" without "might," though 
he knows himself for what he is, and all the " right 
minded " know him intuitively and love him, yet re- 
mains a victim. 

Most glorious of spirits, thus doth strength 

To wisdom, courage, and long suffering love, 

And thee who art the form they animate, 

Minister like a slave." * — (Act III, sc. iii, 1. 1.) 

(5) He needs, once freed from shackles of violent 
unreason, to be united again with "nature;" no 
more an ideal, dwelling apart, communed with only by 
proxy through Panthea, but a realized vital ideal; 
that world which would correspond to the perfect 
man's " need of a world " — no more a matter of vague 
intimations, but of positive experience. 

(6) The shell, the "boon " of Proteus, the God of 
beautiful sea changes, to Asia, on the occasion of her 
nuptials with Prometheus (Act III, sc. iii, 1. 64) ; the 
"Shell of Ocean" (1. 74), of that liberty which is a 
condition of true virtue, must be blown, and its note 
of prophecy must bring about its own fulfillment ; not 
suddenly, to be sure, for though at its blast the 
"spirit of the earth," the optimistic child with in- 
tuitive mind declares " all things have put their evil 
nature off" (Act III, sc. iv, 1. 77), yet the " spirit of 



* Rom. vii, 14-25. 



ELEMENTS OF SALVATION. 185 

the hour" with mature out-looking powers, willing to 
believe, but unable to say he knows until he has ob- 
tained evidence, (accepting the fruits as likely because 
of the tree, but insisting that the tree shall vindicate 
his confidence in it by bearing fruits) is " at first dis- 
appointed not to see such mighty change " (as he 
had felt within) " expressed in outward things." (Act 
III, sc. iv, 1. 128.) 

(7) Last of all, Prometheus must live with Asia, 
not in his " cave," to which he invited her (Act III, sc. 
iii, 1. 6-69), one of mere contemplation, and develop- 
ing from within beautiful fictions (1. 34), exercising 
the " inward eye," and the outer eye only on what they 
have together "uttered;"* but in the "cavern" of 
mother earth (1. 124-175) near which stood the temple 
to Jove (1. 127), and still stands that to Prometheus 
(1. 160), where was worshiped the fire, emblem of 
man's quick spirit ; the " cavern " of science, where 
the outer eye shall scan all nature (inclusive of man), 
and discern in it realized all those ideals which in his 
own "cave" he would have drawn from within, but 
never have felt as being in virtue of their own excel- 
lence, since they would seem to have been — not recog- 
nized, but created by himself.f 

* In the sense of " outered." 

t It is of course quite arguable that Shelley did not make 
any such distinction between these two caves. But such a con- 
tention is an ungrateful one, as it would leave Shelley responsible 
then for an inexcusable piece of slovenly, senseless duplication. 
I believe Shelley was too much of an artist to beget twins for- 
tuitously, Mr. James Thomson notwithstanding. 



186 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 



JUPITER. 

Now at length we are in a position to answer the 
question, "What is Jupiter?" He is that evil from 
which man needs salvation, whatever that evil be- 
And considering what has been said, the reader will 
see how entirely proper is Mr. Rossetti's interpretation 
of him as the " anthropomorphic God," * the " Setebos" 
of Caliban's making, according to Robert Browning, 
in spite of Prof. Scudder's objection to a "theological" 
interpretation. "As long as the human mind is dom- 
nated by the idea of an anthropomorphic God, it mis- 
construes all phenomena of the world, and finds op- 
pression and wrong where it ought rather to find ne- 
cessity or inscrutible vicissitude; as long as the hu- 
man mind is rancorous and revengeful, it initiates and 
prolongs a series of iniquities — woe and crime, and 
continuing to evolve oat of woe and crime in an in- 
finite procession of catastrophe. This is Prometheus 
chained by Jupiter." f In brief, because he imagines 
his God to be " even such an one as himself," he ap- 
plies and must apply to him some "science of the- 
ometry " (to use the poet Rossetti's happy term). The 
result is a big, bold, bad man, to whom submission is 
self-degradation; from whom revolt is duty; but so 
long as he is wrongly considered God, also an impos- 
sible atheism. It is easy, however, to agree with 
Prof. Scudder that Mr. Rossetti's interpretation needs 
supplementing. According to Shelley's line, "All 



* " Thou though test that I was altogether such an one as thy- 
self."— Ps. 1, 21. 

t Shelley Society Papers, Vol. I, p. 139. 



JUPITER. 187 

those foul shapes . . . which were Jupiter" (Act 
III, sc. iv, 1. 180), one has a right to speak of him in 
the plural, particularly as he was given " no power 
over himself" (Act I, 1. 273), and presumably lacked 
the unifying principle of organic life. His " all-pro- 
lific" (Act 1, 1. 213) paternity of evils needs not depend 
upon any populous harem of goddesses— though his 
child, Demogorgon, have Thetis for mother — but upon 
the far simpler principle obtaining in the lowest orders 
of animal life, namely, mere partition. 

"Jupiter stands for all those institutions, civil and 
religious, which were once the true expression of the 
will of man, but which, as the centuries have passed, 
became effete forms, still powerful to bind and with 
an innate tendency to repress." * Still, even now, we 
can not feel satisfied that we have exhausted the being 
of Jupiter. A wrong conception of G-od, producing 
disastrous results in perverse worship and base morals ; 
institutions, civil and religious, expressive of some 
" iiberwundener Standpunct," and now calculated to 
retard progress — nay, crush the very life of society ; 
to these let us add the conception of morals which de- 
rive their authority from something alien to, maybe 
hostile to, the soul itself; that require unreasoning 
obedience, under threat of all sorts of possible and 
impossible penalties to be visited upon the obdurate. 
But if Jupiter is thus threefold, what is the one com- 
mon trait that, though it makes the three not organ- 
ically one, yet serves them in lieu of chemical affini- 
tv? It is violence. How, then, came the soul of 



* Introduction to Prof. Vida Scudder's edition of Prometheus 
Unbound, p. 34. Cf. Shelley's prefaces, on institutions. 



188 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

man to summon Jupiter, a violent Jupiter, " who 
reigns," to the "dominion of wide heaven?" 

Man, in the face of nature, her powers misunder- 
stood and therefore unmastered by him, needed some- 
thing to give him confidence. She seemed so utterly 
different from him, insensitive and apparently uncon- 
scious. It was a satisfaction to feel that one like him- 
self, sensitive and conscious, ruled nature, with whom, 
consequently, he could know how to deal. A God 
like himself could be propitiated if hostile, flattered 
by constant adulation into something like constant 
solicitude for him ; and, if he failed in his efforts, 
it was not bafiling to his intelligence, for in dealing 
w T ith a God like himself he must expect caprices, per- 
versities, selfishness, greed, ingratitude. 

Men needed also an order that should simulate 
union. If they were not sufficiently of one mind and 
heart to be spiritually an organism, they could be 
forced into such a mechanical arrangement, as would 
greatly enhance their safety and happiness, by just that 
limitation of the greed of each, which would allow 
something to the appetite of all. Hence, government 
was inaugurated; paternity became chieftancy ; chief- 
tan cy, kinship; kinship, empire; with aspirations 
after universality. 

Men needed, further, in order to regulate their 
behavior toward one another, certain formulations of 
moral principle, which could be readily applied to in- 
dividual cases. Since the conscience of all was weak, 
the conscience of the expert few must utter itself; and 
these utterances be made an " external " standard, 
unalterable by any private whim or passion. But just 
here lies their danger : they come to be looked upon 



JUPITER. 189 

as so unalterable, that not only do we resist their being 
tampered with, by way of diminution, retrogression ; 
we will not even let them increase, progress. So they 
become the bulwark of those who lag in the rear, the 
deserters of the advancing cause of humanity, from 
behind which they shoot cowardly arrows to wound 
the brave Achilles in the heel. Such would be a 
statement of the good Jupiter was intended to fur- 
nish ; these three evils (once good) which are one in 
virtue of their common method of dealing with indi- 
vidual men, namely, compulsory violence more or less 
hid behind a mask of self-respecting dignity. 

To be sure, " government " has done — is, doubt- 
less, still doing its work. Despotism of the direst sort 
having been itself — historians admit — the only way by 
which national unity became possible, which, in its 
turn, has yet to bring about the dream of political 
solidarity for the race. 

To be sure, an "anthropomorphic " God has done 
and is doubtless still doing for many his work — elicit- 
ing confidence face to face with an unknown universe 
in the savage or semi-savage man. 

To be sure, " moral codes," with their ready-made 
measures of conduct, have still their work to do for 
many of us, though long ago repudiated by the 
acknowledged One Master of Christendom. * 

Jupiter is yet on his throne for some ; for others 
he is fallen ; for most, we trust he is falling, " like 
lightning from heaven," f where he never had any 
rightful place. But, how stands it with Jupiter for us, 
for whom he is falling? The traditional God appears 



Cf. Gal. iii, 24, 25. t Luke, x, 18. 



190 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

to us, if we use our reason, "unjust," by any known 
standard of justice ; he is less moral than we — (to say 
he is so much more moral that he appears immoral, 
is, of course, a silly subterfuge); and, therefore, to 
worship him is, if we realize his injustice, to degrade 
our soul — to prostrate ourselves before might as right. 
External moral codes are altogether too accepta- 
ble to insincere people. They purchase immunities 
by cheap conformity. Disloyal in spirit, they are 
punctilious observers of the letter. Furthermore, 
even with the sincere, they hinder progressive morali- 
zation. They are changeless, and must be, if they are 
to compel; yet, if changeless, they will soon express 
only a part of what the soul of man knows of good, 
and that part very poorly. And then, too, these 
moral codes were devised so as to emphasize those 
evil deeds which cause greatest evident disturbance 
of the social equilibrium ; so that, as a matter of fact, 
we come to think little of those evils the codes do not 
mention. Because we have become used to listening 
to a voice without for moral instruction, and are not 
skilled in listening to any further revelations from 
within, we consider such as of slight importance. We 
value little all that our moral growth has added to 
our moral body, because, forsooth, moral clothes, made 
centuries ago, took no note of what did not then 
exist! We are so absorbed in contemplating these 
clothes that we insist they still fit, and that if they feel 
uncomfortable, it is surplus flesh only that we have 
gained! And, last of all and worst of all, the end is 
utterly forgotten in the means; righteousness of con- 
duct is aimed at, not holiness of character ; and, there- 
fore, little of either is obtained. 



DEMOGORGON. 191 

That government has become the instrument of 
the strong and prosperous, insisting on the preserva- 
tion of disorders on the score of their being legal, and 
therefore partaking of the nature of order, is, we sup- 
pose, denied by none who is not among the strong 
and prosperous for whose advantage the machinery is 
kept oiled and moving. Men are surely, as a rule, 
too selfish to undertake governing mankind for the 
mere advantage of that anarchical race. It is even 
nowadays sometimes whispered among us that public 
servants, who look upon office as a public trust for 
private advantage, are here and there to be met with 
in our own country! This point must not, then, de- 
tain us any longer. 

We see clearly from what the soul of man, ac- 
cording to our Shelley, needs to be delivered. 

10. DEMOGORGON. 

Now, let us ask ourselves the last and most mo- 
mentous critical question — what is Demogorgon ? 
We can only judge of his nature from his (1) office; 
(2) his origin ; and (3) his way of fulfilling that office ; 
since positive description of him, there is none in the 
entire poem. The office he takes upon himself is that 
of external auxiliary to the " Savior and the strength 
of suffering man." (Act I, 1. 825.) When the soul 
has become God's, God must reveal Himself to man 
as the destroyer of evil. If the wrath of man did 
not — because it could not — work the righteousness 
of God,* and the wrath of man w T as overcome by love, 
then that overcoming God, who is love to holiness, 
must reveal himself as wrath f to the evil as eviL over- 

* Jas. i, 20. t Rom. i, 18 ; Col. iii, 6 ; Eph. v, 6. 



192 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

ruling it for "good to them that love" him.* Here 
lies the very difference between the New Testament 
theosophy and that of Shelley. In the New Testa- 
ment, Prometheus and Demogorgon are one. But we 
are concerned now not with the New Testament, or 
with the reconciliation of Shelley's views on this 
point with those of the early Christian writers, but 
with Shelley's Demogorgon. What has been said 
here, is only to suggest the comparison. Un- 
doubtedly, Shelley looked forward to the ideal condi- 
tion of man as one of anarchy, of unmorality, and 
atheism, though each word as here used must be care- 
fully qualified. As Prof. T. H. Green taught us all in 
his second lay sermon : "A passionate atheism is 
often a religion which misunderstands itself. . . . 
It can not recognize its ' God ' under the old name." f 
Surely none is prepared to look to morality in the 
sense of constant choices between good and evil, al- 
ways exercised painfully in favor of the former, as the 
ultimate ideal of human perfection. We hope for a 
time, ourselves, when these choices will cease to be 
painful; when they will be so w^ell established as to 
constitute a habit, and therefore lapse from conscious- 
ness ; that is to say, a time when there will be no 
choice at all. " For the very existence of divided 
natures is a conflict," J and we look for peace at the 
last. Surely because morality should cease to be 
what we understand as morality, there would be no 
loss, only leisure for higher things than "morality" 
if such there be. We are most ourselves when least 



* Ro. viii, 28. " t The Witness of God and Faith," p. 91. 
|. Walter Bagehot's Literary Studies, Vol. I, p. 77. 



DEMOGORGON. 193 

self-conscious ; when self-consciousness is only a meta- 
physical means to an end: — the consciousness of all 
that is good, beautiful, and true — of God. The will, as 
distinct in popular use from " impulse" and." desire," 
is simply an " impulse " or a " desire " that has to 
fight its w r ay against others bitterly hostile.* When 
such foes to the noblest " impulses " and " desires " 
cease, we shall be no longer aware of " will " in the 
vulgar sense, hardly of " personality," if you please, 
in the same sense. We shall have become " super- 
personal," " impersonal " if you prefer, but at all 
events nobler than we are, and blissfully more efficient 
realizers of the divine possibles of man, even though 
some would-be logical fiend should cynically hint that 
we were " degenerates," and had lapsed from the ex- 
alted pinnacle where we boasted of a " distinct con- 
sciousness of personality." f 

In brief, Shelley looks forward to the time when 
we shall be utterly imprincipled; when we shall have 
no principles, because our principles will meet with 

* It surely can not be incorrect to justify the idealist poet par 
excellence by an idealist philosopher. Mr. Green, in Book II of 
his Prolegomena, furnishes the student of Shelley with something 
like a cue to his nature. Whether Mr. Green's psychology is true 
of us all, is one question, and whether it describes Shelley — pos- 
sibly a morbid exception — is another. It is only as describing 
Shelley's " constitution " that we refer to the ideas of Mr. Green. 

T Walter Bagehot fully recognized that this "impulsive 
unity " is a " quality of the highest character ; " " it would be im- 
piety to doubt it" (p. 77). The tone of his essay seems, however, 
to deplore the " lack of personality " (p. 100) incident to such a 
character. He also, it would seem, completely forgets that Pro- 
metheus is only a being of such " simplicity," because he has for 
centuries struggled, suffered, and overcome in his supreme 
temptation — the furies that were in him till they vanished. 



194 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

no resistance ; never come into distinct consciousness 
as such, but appear only as inexplicable unique impulses 
of our being, moving us " altogether," if we " move 
at all," like Wordsworth's cloud ; classing us properly 
with those blessed described in the second stanza of 
Wordsworth's marvelous Ode to Duty : " Who do 
God's work and know it not" as His, because they 
have been able to say to Him with Jesus " all things 
that are mine are thine " and therefore " all thine are 
mine" (John, xvii, 10), for "I and the Father are 
One." (John, x, 30.) Of course, to consider at any 
length the word " anarchy," after its two greater fel- 
lows, were foolish enough. "Granting" the state 
just described to be attained or approximated, what 
would be the use of " government " or corporate 
compulsion of individuals to socially profitable con- 
duct ? Socialism, in our idealistic flight, has been left 
behind as a clumsy thing, — the hope Of compelling by 
selfish considerations, enforced from without, a good 
conduct, — when we are contemplating the possibility 
of a far nobler conduct being produced with spon- 
taneous beauty and joyous ease from within! 

Whatever we think of it ourselves, into the 
sphere of this sort of atheism, immorality and anarchy, 
Prometheus, the racial soul of man, now, after his ab- 
solute conquest of evil desires, is to be ushered by 
Demogorgon's aid. To be sure, what are actually 
processes, stretching over vast periods, are in the poem 
foreshortened. The principle is asserted — development 
of latent possibilities within ; its goal is depicted, 
namely : — that state at present only negatively indicable 
as " atheism, immorality and anarchy ; " and religiously 
felt as a finding of God, holiness and mutual beatitude 



DEMOGORGON. 195 

in that Self, at which Wordsworth hints when he de- 
clares " we feel that we are greater than we know," * 
and in which, according to Shelley, as already quoted, 
there is no "me and thee," but only " One" manifold, 
in which alone Ave intensely live, in whom 

" It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss 
To move, to breathe, to be." 

—(Act III, sc. iv, 1. 125.) t 

Let us, however, draw no conclusion as to what 
Demogorgon must be in order to fulfill his office, be- 
fore we have considered his origin. As fulfilling this 
office, he is child of Jupiter and Thetis. To call him 
the "spirit of revolution" with Prof. Scudder is well 
enough. J But would mere undefined revolution ac- 
complish what is expected of Demogorgon? Is not 
the "weakness of the intellect," which she professes to 
discover in the poem as a whole, due to the fact that 
she has not realized the full " strength of the spirit" 
which she rightly discerns in it? Let us hazard a bit 
of speculation. Suppose Thetis — in virtue of her ori- 
gin in the ocean (the one domain where still a Titan 
rules, according to ^Eschylus ; where Jupiter had not 
asserted any direct sway) — signifies " liberty," " natural 
impulse," "free vital development." Then how would 
we be able to describe Demogorgon — the child or com- 
promise between "irresponsible external control" in 
religion, morals, and politics, and this absolute "spon- 
taneity " or " anarchy" which at present is not self- 
satisfied, "hungering for calm" (Act III, sc. ii, 1. 132)? 



* "Afterthought" to the River Duddon, a series of sonnets. 
t See Appendix, for a note suggesting a comparison of Cole- 
ridge's theosophy and Shelley's. 

% Introduction to edition of Prometheus Unbound, p. 40. 



196 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

Jupiter imagines that this compromise will greatly 
help him ; thus, through Thetis and her issue, becoming 
master also of the free deep. He expects Demogorgon 
to "trample out the spark" (Act III, sc. ii, 1. 24), "the 
soul of man" (1. 5), that remains yet unsubdued. 
How could he so delude himself? Is it not that "a 
secret . . . fear . . . perplexes the Supreme " 
(Act I, 1. 274)? But this compromise, "this fatal 
child," whom Jupiter confesses " mightier " than him- 
self (1. 43), is none other then than — what? 

In politics : — the people forcing one another to so- 
cially advantageous conduct (neither extraneous com- 
pulsion, nor impulsive freedom) " democratic," or if 
you please, " socialistic institutions ;" in morals: — self- 
control in accord with the law of our being (neither 
extraneous compulsion nor impulsive freedom) — 
" duty" as celebrated by Wordsworth ; in theology : — 
the conception of God as imminent, where alone 
knowable, in the soul, and the worship, therefore, not 
of a God outside of us (nor the absence of all wor- 
ship), but of God as the true self in us. The last 
state, which it is to bring about, would be, so far as it 
admits of indication at all, the recognition and wor- 
ship of our self in Him, (who is Self of all others also), 
in order to which worship we should have, by com- 
plete sympathy with all others, to feel and rejoice in 
Him as their self and ours, all being "perfected into 
One." (J. xvii, 23.) 

Now, it seems to the writer that this conception 
of Demogorgon as the compromise between " extrane- 
ous compulsion " and " impulsive freedom " in politics, 
morals, and theology, would be adequate to just the 
office assigned to him. If ever the ideal state is to be. 



DEMOGORGON. 197 

reached, it will be by such a preliminary compromise 
stepping in and dethroning the violent God, and. hav- 
ing accomplished his task, which is simply to dethrone 
him, descending with him into oblivion, returning 
into the unmanifest eternal source of energy. So 
does in the poem Demogorgon behave : 

"The tyranny of heaven none may retain 
Orreassume or hold succeeding thee." 

—(Act III, sc. i, 1. 57.) 

Not himself will hold it, even in trust for another. 
The active incarnation of Demogorgon, as child of 
Jupiter and Thetis ceases, and he is again that im- 
penetrable Gloom, living, omniscient, solicitous for 
the safety, bliss and perfection of man, who speaks 
the tremendous self-denying words of the close, in 
which we are given the secret of salvation, as lying in 
nothing that he did, in particular, as incarnate, in 
nothing that Asia did, seeking the secret or " learning 
meekness " (Act II, sc. iii, 1. 94) ; but simply in the at- 
titude which Prometheus took — all the rest being so 
to say eternally foreordained upon the supervention 
of that attitude of soul in Prometheus, and sure to occur 
again as often as that attitude is reassumed should it 
ever be lost.* There remains for us now only to re- 
mark that of course the " darkness " descriptive of 
the "Primal Power," as Mrs. Shelley calls him, "the 
ultimate ground of divine existence," as Dr. Garnett 
designates him, should be taken to mean " excessive 
light " " exceeding our organs," and therefore to us a 
quick " Gloom." At Prof. Scudder's serious complaint 



* See Appendix, for a note on the significance of the " snake " 
or " serpent." 



198 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

that Shelley has for "regenerated humanity" "no 
message " we may well afford to chuckle amiably. 
We have not yet come to that point where we need 
very urgently a gospel of that sort. We venture to 
suggest that furthermore " the idea of progressive 
development unknown to the men of the revolution " 
will not make at all intelligible the life of the " re- 
generate." Necessarily that "society" will be "in- 
vertebrate " in any and every forecast. The ideal of 
it, though operative, is only in process of self-definition. 
Development is surely for attainment's sake ; so that 
the ultimate is after all " a stagnant empty enjoyment," 
if one chooses so to misname it. While there is 
development attainment is incomplete. 

I am not at all sure that had Shelley possessed 
all our science he could have made himself clearer.* 
Can we say any thing more of life- and death, and of 
man's conquest of nature and self than he ? 

" Death shall be the last embrace of her 
Who takes the life she gave even as a mother, 
Folding her child, says " leave me not again ! " 

—(Act III, sc. hi, 1. 105.) 
" To bear the untransmitted torch of hope 
Into the grave across the night of life." 

— (1. 171 .) • 
" The abyss shouts from her depths laid bare ; 
Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me ; I have none." 

—(Act. IV, 1. 42.) 
" Man, Oh, not men ! a chain of linked thought, 

Of love and might to be divided not." — (1. 395.) 

" Man . . . not yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves 
From chance, and death, and mutability." 

—(Act III, sc. iv, 1. 200.) 

* Of. Shelley's view of nature contrasted with Darwin's, 
Mathilde Blind in Shelley's Society Papers, Vol. I. 



AN IMPERISHABLE POEM. 199 

" Our singing shall build 
In the void's loose field 
A world for the spirit of wisdom to wield ; 
We will take our plan 
From the new world of man, 
And our work shall be called the Promethean." 

—(Act IV, 1. 153.) 

12. AN IMPERISHABLE POEM. 

Iii looking back over the pages of this manuscript, 
it seems to me whatever usefulness such an interpreta- 
tion may have will greatly suffer if it be supposed 
that the author imagines it gifted with any final au- 
thority. It is merely a statement of what the poem 
means to him at his present stage of mental develop- 
ment. Surely, just as Goethe claimed that the con- 
clusion of his Faust would have to be written afresh 
in every age, so this glorious poem will need re-inter- 
pretation. It is no small portion of its merit that so 
far it has been able to admit of all such needed re- 
interpretation, and that it bids fair to do so for all 
time to come. So elastic are its conceptions, so inde- 
finable its pivotal terms. The seer has become the 
organ of " the prophetic soul of the wide world 
dreaming on things to come," and his words are chosen 
with an unconscious reference to meanings that are 
like unrisen stars affecting already his planetary 
sphere, though not seen nor named; they had for him 
a sense, they have for us a sense, they will have a 
sense for those as yet unborn. Each sense is a legiti- 
mate and honest interpretation ; .in fact, the only one 
possible to a living enjoyer of the poem, though, doubt- 
less, the fossil-lover, with his critical pick and im- 
pertinent lens, may, if he be very diligent and suffi- 



200 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

ciently unpoetic, glory in the "exact meanings" 
which the words had (he thinks) for Shelley as mere 
disciple of Godwin ; bnt for all his success, we fear 
his learning may make him if not wholly mad, yet at 
all events very blind, very dogmatic, and to the work 
of Shelley very destructive. For it is now clear that 
only what has within the power of re-adaptation to 
an evershifting environment can continue to live. 
Things are stable only through constant regular 
change. 

The truth of to-day, if limited to what it is to- 
day, is the lie of to-morrow, though the truth of to- 
morrow be the legitimate child of the truth of to-day, 
be, indeed (if we disregard the unwarranted limita- 
tion), the same, in the only sense that any thing re- 
mains the same. Creeds have lived only in so far as 
they were suggestions in the disguise of definitions; 
where they were precise, unalterable, strong (as men 
said), there they perished. New thoughts, insensibly, 
particle by particle, replaced the old, and few were 
aware of the vital process of renewal; few now know 
or realize how strange would sound to our ears the 
English of old Shakespeare ; fewer still now know or 
realize how strange would seem to our minds the 
actual conceptions of many dogmatists whose words 
we quote with zest, and whose spirit we rightly com- 
mend, because it begat the spirit that uses their old 
words in a better sense than theirs. 

As a willow standing in alluvial soil puts forth 
new roots to suck the fatness of successive layers of 
rich deposit and pushes upward yearly in new youth, 
so the old ideas procure for themselves strong nutri- 
ment from each generation of thinkers, and live al- 



AN IMPERISHABLE POEM. 201 

ways by those that are above. Old roots have been 
abandoned as the layers they threaded became barren. 
~Not so the sturdy, stubborn oak. Its tough, dogmatic 
fiber does not help it to survive. The new deposits 
cover its old roots (should the river of life bring the 
thoughts of successive generations under its shadow), 
and it is only a matter of a }^ear or two — a generation 
or so of thinkers — and the tree dies at the top ; then, 
when all the living leaves are lost, it rots, and makes 
room for other trees — that spring from its acorns, but 
which, like it, are doomed to die, because, true to their 
parent, they insist on changeless individuality. 

To me, the Prometheus of Shelley is an inspired 
poem. Carefully has the seer limited himself to what 
he saw. He was not presumptuous enough to invent 
or outline prematurely "a gospel for the redeemed!" 
He spoke of redemption only in its essential features. 
The "times and seasons" he knew not, nor pretended 
to know. The finality of the redemption as a fact he 
doubted, though the principle thereof he trusted. It 
could, in case of need, be applied again and again. 
Below each depth is another depth ; above each height, 
a further height; and in Shelley's poem nothing is 
rigid, determinate; therefore, nothing grows old in 
it, nothing dies. It will speak to the future of " the 
last things " as eloquently as to us, though to them 
Demogorgon — the expressly undefined and undefina- 
ble — yet for every man always quite definite engine 
for the overthrow of regnant evil, will mean what we 
perhaps have in our wildest hours of prophetic fore- 
cast never imagined. So the poem will live, and the 
poet will be loved, and wherever "he doth bear his 
part, while the one spirit's plastic stress sweeps through 



202 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

the dull, dense world," he will rejoice to know that 
the work he accomplished in those brief thirty years 
of spiritual battle was to serve untold generations — 
lift them into planes of ideal freedom ; give them faith 
in the Good that reveals himself as Beauty ; make them 
look for all things to no external source, but to the 
divine fount of humanity within. 



THE PERMANENCE OF ART. 203 



V. THE PERMANENCE OF ART. 

"In love with things" — that is what our poets 
are not enough, for they are, Mr. John Burroughs 
thinks, too entirely "in love with poetry."* We ap- 
plaud the dictum of our quoted critic, if he means 
that a poet should have, in the first place, something 
to say, and make his verse-form his second concern 
only. But that a true poet must — speaking with a 
strict attention to the meaning of words — be more in 
love with things than with poetry we refuse to believe. 
Would he ever go to the trouble of writing, were he 
primarily concerned with things ? As artisan, per- 
haps, but surely not as artist. For he would, were he 
consistent, spend his allotted life in ogling, caressing, 
arranging, and rearranging things; he would labor 
early and late to acquire and control them. For he 
would be, in plain terms, " a lover of things," and 
never a " poet " except in the sense that Gray sup- 
poses to be a possible one, when he whispers pathet- 
ically of " mute inglorious Miltons," — in our opinion 
quite impossible freaks of nature. 

For why, we ask ourselves bluntly, should this 
fortunate youth, endowed with a supreme passion for 
things, busy himself with what he loves so much less, 
with poetry, that most wily and exacting siren of all the 

* A reference to an article on Art for Art's Sake, which ap- 
peared in " The Dial " about the time the reflections which make 
up this essay were thrown into literary form. 



204 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

arts ? The only explanation of such a man's deliber- 
ate turning into a book-maker of the conscientious 
sort — i. e., not for lucre — would be the appearance all 
of a sudden of an unreasonable missionary zeal. Un- 
reasonable, we repeat, because no one, surely, will 
claim that " things," being unconscious, and manifest- 
ing no courteous delight in human flattery, will be 
benefited by the preaching of such an ardent zealot. 
Missionary spirit of this quality or brand, is admira- 
ble, but it argues fatally against the whole-hearted 
fondness for things which we assumed to exist in our 
gifted youth. Only because he loved men as much as 
his well-beloved "things," would he feel compelled to 
make them aware of the entire lovableness of " things." 
Nothing but a hunger and thirst for human sympathy 
and appreciation, superior to his appetite for things, 
could, we believe, move such a man to write a line of 
true poetry. But this is against our hypothesis, in- 
validates totally our assumption, and obliges us to 
save the position of Walt Whitman's gallant cham- 
pion by interpreting his words afresh, by putting a 
loose construction upon them, strict constructionists 
though we are inclined to be. In entire accord with 
another writer in " The Dial," we will assert that a 
true poet loves what he has to say, and loves also to 
be heard, and therefore weds the thought or sentiment 
to the most insinuating and permanently effective 
form he can construct. We might further say that at 
the bottom this is just what Mr. John Burroughs 
meant. Weary of volumes produced by idle tinkerers 
of rhyme, who count feet on their literary fingers, 
when* they would do better to cobble at literal shoes, 
he gave impatiently an over-emphatic expression to 



THE PERMANENCE OE ART. 205 

his idea. Like Macaulay, he succumbed to an innate 
love of rhetoric — and did not of course expect to be 
understood to mean exactly what he said. Alas, who 
does? 

But grant for a moment that a poet ought to be 
in love with things — and this we gladly do — a ques- 
tion suggests itself, an exegetic question of very great 
importance. In love with things as they are, or 
rather, as they are presented to our daily observa- 
tion ? Or, shall it be, in love with things as we 
believe they have it in them to become ; with things 
according to their apparent possibilities rather than 
their often damaged actuality, or arrested develop- 
ment? The first answer is the source of realism, the 
second that of idealism in art. 

It is quite impossible for any one who considers 
with some seriousness the matter of the permanency, 
by perpetuation from age to age, of the noble arts, 
who desires to make a sober inquiry into it, per- 
manently to postpone a settlement in his mind of this 
vital issue — realism or idealism ? Absolute realism is 
an absurd theory which no great artist has ever car- 
ried into his work-shop. The theory is compelled to 
make concession after concession to its vigorous, in- 
defatigable opponent. The mere practical exigencies 
of picture, statue, sonata, or poem, forbid an implicit 
obedience to those maxims logically deducible from 
such a radical proposition. Absolute realism would 
require that no alteration be made in the data of 
nature ; that no right of selection, resolution and re- 
combination of parts, be claimed by the artist ; that 
filth of gutters and blues of heaven be equally 
interesting and delectable; that no extraneous at- 



206 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

tractions be imported into the object selected at 
random for copy; that the artist, without any im- 
pertinent notions of beauty and ugliness, transcribe 
unaltered, unshaded, unemphasized, what he sees, 
injecting into his work nothing of his own intellectual 
and moral self, no suggestion of a personal message to 
men, not the faintest impress of his presence and 
preference. In fact, absolute realism is a theory 
which demands of the artist that he be a machine, 
and his work a transparent window through which a 
man may look upon the objective world that sur- 
rounds him. Indeed the artist would have to be a 
machine undisturbed by any natural conditions what- 
soever, always and in all places equally able and will- 
ing to observe and reproduce. The photographic 
camera is far too human to be the ideal practitioner. 
It has an unwarranted prejudice for light. Vague 
profundities of twilight awe and midnight horror — 
these the sensitive plate refuses to report. The eye 
can give more than the camera, but unfortunately be- 
hind the eye is lodged a living sensitive soul — a 
medium whose refracting power is never absolutely 
calculable. For after all, the eye most scientifically 
trained has its theory to prove, puts its construction 
upon things, sees only what attracts it, and has a 
history which determines its method of observation, 
and the nature of what attracts and fails to attract. 

Indeed the very constitution of the eye is a mute 
reproof to realism. All things are seen according to 
the eye's structure and not primarily according to the 
structure of things. There is a horizon. Things ap- 
pear to us grouped according to our own position. 
So it is with the soul. And every artist will have to 



THE PERMANENCE OE ART. 207 

reckon sooner or later — the sooner the better for him- 
self and his work — with the soul in its totality. And, 
by the way, be it said here that the artist who con- 
sults the soul's demand for beauty can not afford to 
neglect its demand for goodness. All realism is an 
exaggerated attempt to satisfy the soul's demand for 
truth. Let us remember that man is a unit no matter 
how much we may dissect him in our text-books of 
psychology, theology, rhetoric, or anatomy. There is 
one soul with many faculties. If satisfied as to truth, 
but morally offended, the hurt will counteract the de- 
light. Let the artist theorize as he will, he can never 
declare himself independent of the ultimate moral 
ideals, much less of contemporary feelings as to what 
is repulsive, foul, and villainous. Baudelaire in his 
terrific poem " La Charogue" is at bottom no realist. 
It is not in such illumination, with such ironic 
surroundings that, as a rule, an abandoned carcass is 
seen. The most obstinate realist would find that only 
those of his works which happened to give some 
favorable aspect of nature, some shocking or lovely 
combination, allowing of a definite, rational, or emo- 
tional construction, would attract and hold the at- 
tention of his public. The public always was and 
will be idealistic. It has enough to do with dust and 
squalor. It loves tinsel — any thing that will rescue 
it from the w r eariness of the commonplace. Fidelity 
to crude fact is the last thing it appreciates. It may 
admire and praise the skill of the literal copyist, but 
it will soon turn away bored or angered from his 
w r ork. In words you may assert that all things in 
nature are equally beautiful. When it comes to prac- 
tice, it is soon found that all things will not equally 



208 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

endure artistic reproduction. But a theory that 
offers no infallible guidance to practice, that leaves so 
much to instinct, luck, or a common sense delib- 
erately hostile to it. is of little real use. What then 
of realism ? 

It is not so much a theory as a reactionist cry. 
It is a plea, as we said above, for truth. But as truth 
is not all that the soul wants, realism is quite im- 
potent or rather inadequate to rule when the reins 
of government are put in its hands. Now, what is 
idealism ? 

To give, in fancy, free scope to the powers of na- 
ture, to hasten the process of their evolution, to bring 
it in idea to its apparently rational conclusion, its 
craved completion and perfection ; this, we should say, 
is to idealize. Idealistic art portrays that final state 
or some visibly advancing stage in the process of its 
attainment. Often in nature we find isolated in- 
stances of realistically reproducible landscapes, faces, 
and color-groupings. These serve as educative hints. 
The artist understands that these isolated instances 
are what will bring a panic of joy to the hearts of 
men. A radiant sunset, a vast expanse of nacreous 
waters, a spread of marsh netted with reflected blue 
or gold, a plain of mingling fields and woods, a burst 
of icy peaks from among forested foothills, a ravine 
loud with the rapturous tumult of torrents, the up- 
heaval of cloud-continents threatening to bury our 
awe-struck world, a child in careless merriment, a 
woman, the perfection of all things seen ! These and 
a thousand other isolated instances present themselves 
again and again in the history of mankind. A hun- 
ger is whetted beyond patient endurance. More ! is 



THE PERMANENCE OF ART. 209 

the cry, more ! and the philosopher tells us, as best he 
can, why it is we feel the hunger, and what it is in 
these things that appeases it. The artist catches 
glimpses with his soul's eye of " the light that never 
was on sea or land," made imaginable, however, by 
his experience of stars and moon and sun ; and with 
symbols — visible forms, colors, musical tones, and 
words — he essays to impart his vision — symbols which, 
while they present not the things themselves, but only 
a sense-suggestion of them, give us, who are at bot- 
tom most in love with things, a moment's delirious 
illusion of seeing, hearing, having, and handling 
things. To the extent implied in this requisite illusion 
must the artist be a realist. He must be plausible. 

But the subject of our main inquiry is, whether 
we can reasonably ascribe perpetuity to art on the as- 
sumption of continuous and accelerated human de- 
velopment? We take for granted that there is truth, 
though not yet fully apprehended. Such an act of 
faith precedes all scientific research and all philosophic 
speculation. We take for granted that centuries of 
equalizing culture will bring men more and more to 
the acceptance of one view of things, one philosophy, 
one truth. We assume that man will get more and 
more a mastery over the lower nature which fosters 
diversity of opinion for sheer diversity's sake ; that 
harmony, not disharmony, cosmos, not chaos, is the 
goal of present movement — in one word : progress. 

Fully aware of the impossibility of prophesying 
truly without a sure grasp on some eternal principle 
and an absolute acquaintance with things as they 
now are, no one claims greater value for his prog- 



210 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

nostications than that which belongs to a well- 
meaning piece of fallible speculation. I am suf- 
ficiently unbiased to acknowledge myself doubtless 
equipped with unconscious biases enough to fit out 
w T ith them a whole host of scientists and scholars in 
battle array, though, alas ! their science and scholar- 
ship are forever — so far as I am concerned — beyond 
the attainment even of my knights of day-dream ad- 
venture. If we take up in turn all the main thinka- 
ble hypotheses, in regard to the universe, and ascer- 
tain what relation to each one of these is borne by 
the problem of perpetuity for art, we shall have re- 
solved, if our thinking has been correct, this vexa- 
tious problem into another, still more vexatious, 
namely, which of these philosophic attitudes will 
triumph? And here we propose to leave the matter, 
because, doubtless, we are not prepared to offer a so- 
lution to the second problem with which we can 
all be expected to agree. We shall in thus pro- 
ceeding do no more than the scientists of all time. 
Asked to solve a riddle, they propound another more 
difficult as a solution. And if the lively exercise of 
man's highest faculties in order to their greatest de- 
velopment be the purpose of human life, are we not 
glad that the Sphinx of earthly wisdom is a sophist 
and a deceiver? First of all, let us assume the truth 
of positivism ; that is to say, we are to take for granted 
that the proper attitude of the philosophic mind is 
that of hostility to philosophy, denying any ultimate 
human explanation, waiving all theory, and content- 
ing itself with the mere accumulation of facts, data of 
experience. To be sure, a classification for convenience 
will be made, and the notes of each class will be 



THE PERMANENCE OF ART. 211 

stated — but the classification must be always regarded 
as only for convenience, and the notes of each class as 
tentative expressions ; further experience may require 
an entire re-classification, an entire restatement of the 
so-called laws of nature. In plain words, we are to 
accept things as they present themselves to us. We 
are not to surmise the existence of harmonizing and 
explanatory facts which are not revealed as such. 
The law of cause and effect is stated as a law of phe- 
nomenal sequence. Observed facts are the all which 
it is licit to contemplate. 

What becomes of art, if this be the true attitude 
of the intelligent? What is its office? To express 
these observed laws of nature, these abstract state- 
ments of her customary workings, allegorically for the 
sake of those who are yet unable to grasp them di- 
rectly. Art takes the rank of a more or less uncon- 
scious expositor of science. This is the rank that M. 
Taine assigns to it in the first chapters of his Philos- 
ophy of Art. But, on the hypothesis of ultimate 
universal education, this office will become useless. 
Art will have a sinecure. It will be more and more 
transparent, surrendering more and more its concrete 
methods. Finally, art will be, as a teacher, altogether 
relegated to the nursery or kindergarten. To culti- 
vated men its only sphere of enjoyable usefulness 
would be that of mimicry. But mimicry is perma- 
nently pleasureable only to those who possess, or be- 
lieve that they can and will possess, the real things 
mimicked. What a torment was that of Tantalus ! 
What a diabolical spirit would be that of a mimicking 
art for the poor and impotent, showing them what 
they might enjoy but must never have! Its sphere of 



212 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

possible beneficence is identical with the sphere of its 
uselessness and supersession by actual things. The 
rich can enjoy more or less the imitative suggestions 
of art, because they can at any moment replace them 
by the positive objects suggested. What is then pre- 
sumably the dignity left to art? The mirror behind 
a splendid show-case, feebly duplicating what is be- 
fore it, for an instant's frivolously amusing illusion as 
the passer-by looks in ! 

Remember that all idealizing in art is banned by 
positivism as sentimentality quite behind the times. 
Art can therefore reasonably furnish nothing but 
what already exists far more satisfactorily in sensible 
reality. Whenever she exploits the vaulting ambi- 
tion of the heart, suggests the pursuit of rainbow- 
contacts, she is an immoral disturber of the normal 
contentment which the practical man should cultivate 
above all else. 

Let us summarize for positivism. The love of 
things " as they are" makes art wicked for the poor, 
foolish and trifling for the rich. But what is wicked, 
or foolish and trifling suffers extinction in due time. 
Only, what is kindly, beneficent, wise, and useful will 
in the long run be sought and preserved by men. 

As men develop more and more, their capacity 
for thought, they take less and less of dominant pleas- 
ure in the play of the senses, and therefore in the pre- 
sentation of truth through sensible combinations, 
which is art, according to positivism. Direct ap- 
proach to truth is preferred to circuitous wanderings; 
immediate sight to the guess-work of so-called intui- 
tion or faith. How easy it is to show from past and 
present experience what must always be the fate of art 



THE PERMANENCE OE ART. 213 

with those who prefer abstract sentiments about the 
workings of things to the things themselves ! What 
patronizing affability, at the very best, do not your 
scholars, scientists, philosophers, and theologians show 
to art and artists ; what a half-cynical respect, put on 
for the sake of courtesy, do they not show for the fine 
phrensy and its methods of operation ! The arid 
scholar, scientist, philosopher, and theologian, when 
in a particularly gentle humor, will grant, maybe, to 
art a subordinate place among the forces working for 
the dissemination of knowledge and the acceleration 
of culture. Now and then a gracious Darwin will go 
so far as to deplore his own lost susceptibility to the 
charmers of men's half-witted infancy. Some will 
consider art very convenient as a mine of philological 
and archaeological data, a sort of embalming salve for 
curious anthropological mummies. The theologian 
will admit that art is not necessarily pernicious, that 
under proper conditions " she " may become a " hand- 
maid" to "Dame" Theology. He overlooks the fact 
that religion and art have always tended to corrupt 
each other by a misapprehension of each other's 
sphere. The artist, in his secret soul, of course re- 
versed the proposition of the theologian. Dame Art 
found a convenient slave in theology — for theology 
furnished subjects and purchasers. But Dame Art 
stooped to conquer, knowing well the bitter temper 
of her slave, and with gracious words she forced her 
to a full submission. The mutual attractions of art 
and theology have always served to disturb their indi- 
vidual equilibrium. Think of some hymns that we 
sing — the detestable heresies they snugly enshrine for 
the pious folk, safe from the heresy-hunters, because 



214 MODEFN POET PROPHETS. 

enshrined in equally detestable doggerel ! Think of 
the secularization of the church during the periods of 
art revival ! Think of the mortification of art in' 
times of spiritual fervor! To be sure, it is not to an 
abstract love of truth only that we are indebted for 
those ghastly eyes, those shrewish cheek-bones, those 
saintly fingers and toes, those ribs and knee-caps — the 
whole skeleton grinning through transparent yellow 
parchment intended to pass for flesh and skin. To 
be sure, these morbid horrors are due full as much to 
the spiritual teacher as to the scholar and theologian. 
Still, we feel that they are presented with the full ap- 
proval of scholar and theologian. But enough of this. 
We are content if we have merely indicated the ten- 
denc}^ in those given to the search of truth in abstract 
form to disparage, belittle, and degrade art. If all 
men should, in the course of time, come to a view 
such as theirs — and of course a thoroughgoing, ortho- 
dox, scientific, scholarly, and theological millennium 
involves this holy hope — art will lie down to sleep in 
the tomb of her fathers — a tomb hewn out of the 
granite of their contempt, and sealed with a sneer for 
seal. 

Let us now set before our minds very briefly the 
great hypotheses in respect to mind and matter that 
present themselves to all men except consistent posi- 
tivists, who decide a priori that none of them can 
have any validity, much less truth, or at least that 
they have a reasonable right to commit themselves to 
none. 

1. We can hold that matter and spirit are two 
realities, distinct in essence and nature. They how- 
ever co-operate, though how and why is not clear. 



THE PERMANENCE OF ART. 215 

At this juncture, there is ample opportunity for spec- 
ulation. We call such a view dualism, and all philo- 
sophic systems that make it their point of departure, 
dualistic. 

2. We can hold that matter and spirit are two phases 
or manners of appearing to man of one reality; mat- 
ter, being a generic name for all its self-presentations 
to the senses ; spirit, a generic name for all its self-pre- 
sentations to the mind. Matter and spirit are thus sup- 
posed to he distinct only in our perception, but identi- 
cal in reality. Upon this theory every particle of 
matter is at the same time a particle of spirit, in vir- 
tue of which fact it is enabled to show itself to our 
mind. Our body is an organized congeries of material 
particles, our soul the organized unity of their spiritual 
potencies. Every change in body is also a change in 
soul. This theory is called monism. It is the doctrine 
first taught by Spinoza, and ably championed to-day 
by many notable scientists in Europe and America. 

3. We can hold that only one of the two — spirit 
and matter — is the reality. If we give our preference 
to matter, and call spirit a function or form of its 
activity, we profess to believe in the theory sailed ma- 
terialism. It may be said that many leading scientists 
in our day are more or less consistent materialists. 

4. We can hold that only one of the two — spirit 
and matter — is reality, and give our preference to 
spirit. We will call matter a manner of spirit's 
operation upon us — one mode of its self-manifestation. 
This theory has been held in modified forms by many 
of the most eminent philosophers of modern times, 
and is called idealism. To avoid confusion of terms 
in this paper we shall call it spiritism. 



216 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

Let us begin with materialism, the third philo- 
sophic conjecture in the order we arbitrarily assigned 
to them. The materialist is not like the positivist 
necessarily hostile to idealistic art — in the sense which 
we gave to the word idealizing: — a giving, in fancy, 
free scope to the powers of nature ; an imaginative 
hastening of the manifest evolutionary tendency in 
things. In so far as the materialist is opposed to ideal- 
ism in art, he suffers from the same limitations as the 
consistent positivist. He makes art an instructor for 
primary grades — which science always supersedes with 
the acquisition of adequate culture ; or he makes art 
a mere mimicker of things. At best the artist plays 
with certain phases of matter to suggest mental pro- 
cesses which are but functions of the matter of the 
brain, and which could always be better suggested 
by the solid things themselves which the artist uses 
as models. Robert Browning's simoniacal prelate is 
of this opinion : 

We want the same things, Shakespeare and myself, 
And what I want, I have : he, gifted, more, 
Could fancy he too had it when he liked, 
But not so thoroughly, that, if fate allowed, 
He would not have it also in my sense. 

Ask him, if this life's all, who wins the game. 

— (Bishop Blougram's Apology.) 

But realistic art, in the hands of the materialist, 
will doubtless never be truly realistic. He has a theory 
to prove. Without his will he obscures the data of 
nature that seem to go against it. He will limit him- 
self to the reproduction of flesh and that which sug- 
gests the uses and satisfaction of the flesh. Thus art 
runs great danger of becoming depraved, a secret, 



THE PERMANENCE OF ART. 217 

more or less respectable, generator of base passions. 
For only by suggesting the pleasures of sense has mate- 
rialistic art a chance to please and therefore to succeed. 
And if the materialist gives himself over to idealizing, 
what a pendemonium will his gallery and his volume 
of poems become ; what a haunt of lascivious nudi- 
ties and gluttonous excesses! For, after all, as an 
artist he has a losing cause. He has no source of 
nobler inspiration ; he must be aridly abstract, which is 
suicidal; or he must make a shameless appeal to the 
lusts of the flesh. 

Dualism and monism will permit of practically 
the same aesthetic theory, though the latter only is 
able to assign a definite dignity to art. 

Dualism admits the co-operation of matter and 
spirit. It recognizes the superiority of their united 
to their single efforts, as all men recognize the superi- 
ority of two to one. The more harmonious the co- 
operation, the more truly are they two, instead of one 
and a fraction. The sum of their effects is. an alge- 
braic sum. In so far as they conflict, they annul each 
other. The greatest actual result is obtained when 
all their effects are positive, mutually contributive. 

Monism views matter and spirit as two attributes 
of one substance, whereby we know it to be real. 
The highest degree of reality for us belongs con- 
sequently to that which manifests itself through both, 
and thus the greatest efficacy and value for man be- 
long to that which has both a material and a spirit- 
ual sphere of discernible action. 

Dualism and monism, therefore, will alike de- 
mand of art a symbol, or sensible body of expression, 
proportionate to its import, or sensitive soul of mean- 



218 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

ing. Both will demand an adjustment and balance 
between thought and technique ; with this differ- 
ence, however, that the dualist will not explain their 
connection and co-operation. He will not be able to 
require of the artist a fair equalization of the material 
and spiritual elements of art. A lack in the one 
could, theoretically at least, be amply compensated 
for by a superabundance of the other. Why not? 
A quite satisfactory answer drawn from the premises 
of unadulterated dualism seems hardly possible. 
Whereas the monist can enforce the principle of 
equilibrium. According to him an expression of the 
real is defective when one-sided ; the real is fully 
manifest to man only when spirit and matter unite in 
equal proportion to express it ; and since priority be- 
longs to neither, neither should be preferred. Both 
lose^ expressive power if either outbalances the other. 
Supposing that either dualism or monism be 
verified by the racial evolution of man, what chance 
has art for perpetuity ? The dualist will hardly, the 
monist certainly not, give his preference to abstract 
science. The very fact that it is abstracted from one 
real element in things makes it inferior to concrete art. 
According to monism, at least, science should be the 
mere forerunner and prophet. Art is its fulfillment. 
The world wants art, not science. Science discovers 
the idea, art gives it a fuller reality, setting it in com- 
petition with sensible things. We do not mean to 
deny that monism as well as dualism will allow of a 
realistic theory of art, which would be just as suicidal 
in this case as any other. But we would affirm that 
there is an inherent reason why the dualist as well as 
monist will be, as artist,a champion of idealism. Many 



THE PERMANENCE OF ART. 219 

ideas he finds embodied, many are bodiless. When 
will his works best compete with real things? When 
-embodying ideas more satisfactorily embodied by 
them, or when furnishing palpable, visible and audible 
forms to ideas that are nowhere, or at all events 
rarely, embodied by them? Will not the artist 
naturally lean toward idealism, toward the repre- 
sentation of rare and fortunate combinations? Will he 
not abjure, even without any thought upon the sub- 
ject, the realism which would make competition with 
things an impossibility for his work ? Both dualist 
and materialist, recognizing the reality of spirit, make 
logical the embodiment of hitherto homeless ideas. A 
positivist is committed to realism, a materialist can 
idealize only by an exaggeration of what appears. 

But it is still possible to ask the question why 
should the dualist and the monist resort to art ? If an 
idea is homeless in reality, or rare, is it not possible 
to give it a home, to reproduce it again in the realm of 
solid things? Now, plainly had man the ability to 
hasten the evolution of things as he pleased, there 
would not be the same temptation to create artistic 
works. But even if the power of adequate inter- 
ference were not denied him, there would still be the 
awkward barrier of space. To be sure, there are in 
the Alps scenes nobler than painter or poet can rep- 
resent; and in mid-ocean, on the desert, in forest and 
prairie there are scenes equally noble. How shall 
they, however, be brought together for comparison, 
for quiet successive admiration, for repeated scrutiny ? 
Man will always have to console himself with art, no 
matter what fantastic triumphs over space and time 
some future Bellamy may predict for him. We do 



220 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

not deny for a moment, however, that could men be 
freed from barriers of space and time altogether, could 
they hasten growth, retard decay, interfere successfully 
at will with nature, art would cease to have any reason 
for its existence. Every sane man would prefer per- 
fect things to imperfect copies of perfect things. But, 
of course, any thing of this sort is not expected. As 
long as man is a denizen of earth, he will do in idea 
what he can not do in fact, and he will eternize and 
embody his idea. We can not make men physically 
perfect? Well, we will set to work to carve us an 
Apollo, to image to ourselves what we conceive to be 
the destiny of human evolution on the plane of physi- 
cal form. The processes of natural idealizing or evo- 
lution are too slow, so we bring them to their close, 
at least in some worthy work of the imagination. 
Now we may say that art has thus practical perpetuity. 
In heaven there may be no architects, sculptors, 
painters, poets, and musicians ; on earth, as long as 
men have power to think beyond what they see and 
hear and feel, they will glory in artists and delight in 
their works. 

Nor can it be said that granting this practical per- 
petuity to art, it will be nevertheless one of ever-de- 
creasing importance. With every attainment, vision 
and aspiration increase proportionally. The more 
power man learns to wield over nature, the more 
powers will he discover yet to be subdued, the more 
fresh occasions will he tind for these powers to exer- 
cise a beneficent interference with the course of things. 
The growth of science is but the herald of a corre- 
spondent growth of art. Every advance of science, 



THE PERMANENCE OF ART. 221 

the discoverer, is a new opportunity for art the pioneer 
settler and final inhabitant. 

And suppose for a moment that no new subjects, 
no new realms to conquer, be discovered by science. 
There is not only a real need for a unique incorpora- 
tion of an idea, there must be series of manifold re- 
incarnations. Omnis determinatio est negatio. Say 
what you will, the soul is persuaded that so it is. In 
imagination man's protean self can adapt itself to 
many and various external expressions. Why should 
only one of two possible, mutually exclusive moods be 
made dominant? Why should the soul, that is to-day 
placid and to-morrow tumultuous, have a neutral 
aspect, or one that fixes this rather than that of these 
equally real phases of its being ? Why is there no 
audible minority report ? Perhaps that minority con- 
stitutes the true "remnant!" What soul does not 
realize that much of what is best is in the never to be 
suppressed yet evermore thwarted minority; unable 
thus to gain the ascendant and impress itself on the 
body? 

Man believes the self to be many in aspect, but 
perceives the body to be one — a composite photograph 
at the very best — and therefore a quite inadequate 
portraiture. So the Madonna idea is as wide and 
deep as mankind. Why should she, the beautified 
Virgin, have dark hair and dark eyes only? Are 
there no fair-haired, blue-eyed mothers? Is only the 
dark-haired and dark-eyed to feel herself akin to the 
ideal of virgin womanhood? Indeed, the heart of 
mankind would feel better satisfied could eyes and 
hair have all humanly possible hues at once ; and since 
that may not be, the next best thing is a series of 



999 



MODERN POET PROPHETS. 



presentations or external conceptions of the one 
Madonna idea. The true artist-soul loves, values 
all — even the least gracious — all that are sincere at- 
tempts to give a real body to the idea. He will feel 
that only when all normal womanly types have been 
sanctified by due dedication to the Madonna idea in 
some masterpiece, has the spirit of art fulfilled its 
proper task. And all this will have a philosophic 
justification for the monist. The various presentations 
are various attempts to give reality to an idea, and its 
indeterminateness for humanity at large demands this 
variety of embodiment. And what has been said of 
eyes and hair, and other externals, is true also of 
more inward possibilities of womanly variation. 
"Wonder, humility, pride, amazement — what might 
not be the emotion with which the girl-mother views 
her divine child? The task of art is thus infinite. 
Only with an evolution working steadily toward tedi- 
ous uniformity of type, and unanimity of emotive re- 
sponse to circumstances, will art ever suffer a check 
to her triumphal procession. 

( Last of all theories let us consider idealism or, as 
we have agreed to call it through this paper, spiritism. 
What will be its effect upon aesthetics ? Matter and 
all its phenomena are but modes of the spirit's activ- 
ity ; more or less supposititious media of its practical, 
willed self-exercise. They are felt to be unreal, or 
real only with a borrowed reality. The ideal of spirit- 
ism is pure thought, never invested with sensible 
symbol-forms, immediately communicated, potent in 
and of itself to create and alter currents of thought 
and feeling. To the spiritist, who is thorough-going, 
all art-expression is but a confession of our poverty. 



PERMANENCE OF ART. 223 

of our deplorable incapacity for direct intercourse. It 
is . but a poor temporary substitute, an educative 
chrysalis, from which human soul-communication will 
have to free itself ere it can unfold the full glory of its 
possibilities. 

Spiritism is not, however, restless in this realm of 
the apparent. In dealing with it, perfectly persuaded 
that spirit alone has prime reality, its votary knows 
that he is dealing with a mask, a show, a phantasm, 
at most a symbolic alphabet. The only purpose of the 
visible, audible, tangible expression of art, is the con- 
veyance of " meaning." 

Here, as is so often the case, we find extremes of 
thought meeting in one practice. Positivism and ma- 
terialism resemble spiritism in this dissatisfaction with 
art. Only the former regard it as capable of super- 
session by science — abstract statements about material 
phenomena — or by the phenomena themselves ; while 
the latter, spiritism, would not know what to do 
with such abstract statements or such phantoms. It 
desires an immediate experience of the Reality under- 
lying that matter of which the so-called laws, or form- 
ulated habitudes, constitute science. 

Under the intellectual patronage of spiritism art 
becomes mystic or merely significant. Consequently 
it becomes very soon conventional, because it attends 
so little to the models of nature, and desires the quick- 
est and brightest flash of meaning with the least flame 
of sense ; and there is always the danger that the sym- 
bol should be too startling if .new, too attractive and 
all-absorbing if beautiful, detracting therefore, from 
the prominence of the thing symbolized ! 

That art can not but die away when serving as 



224 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

a hieroglyphic tongue gradually simplified, more and 
more rigid and sterile, is not only theoretically, but we 
think practically, demonstrable. Christianity, in so 
far as it necessitates a philosophy, is purely idealistic. 
To the masses it is conveniently dualistic. To all 
mystics, pietists, vigorous seekers after God, art loses 
rapidly in interest, and why this will always be so, is 
easy to understand. 

As Browning puts it so well in his " Rabbi Ben 
Ezra," the true mystic does not consider that mere 
work or efficacy is the test of a man and his success. 

It is indeed 

" What the world's coarse thumb 
And finger fail to plumb " 

that he prizes most in himself. As artist, therefore, 
he would wish to express 

''All instincts immature, 
All purposes unsure 
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount." 
And yet, as he shows, the artist is impotent to do 
this except by most pitiful suggestions, for these rarest 

realities are 

" Thoughts hardly to be packed 
Into a narrow act," 

and not therefore dramatically presentable ; no mate- 
rial for architect, sculptor, painter ; — 

" Fancies that broke through language and escaped," 
ay, eluding the very poet! At last, only the musician 
will be patronized by the spiritist. But, as Cousin 
points out, it will be because music expresses nothing 
definitely, that it will for a time pass for an adequate 
expression of all. Soon, however, the imperious 
teacher of high things will see that he has been de- 



PERMANENCE OF ART. 225 

lucled ; that infinitiveness is not infinity — is indeed 
dangerous, as it will express the exalted and the sensual 
with equal impartiality, for ascetic and worldling re- 
spectively, being rather of the nature of a stimulant, 
like hashish, which gives each man his paradise in 
total accord with the man's soul. 

Now, we do not deny that the spiritist takes in- 
terest in art; only we desire to point out that this will 
be due not to his spiritism, but rather to that section 
of his nature yet unsubdued by his theory, or to his 
desire to use art as a common ground with the uncon- 
verted masses. All mankind having once become ab- 
solute spiritists in practice as well as in theory, there 
would be a wholesale translation of mankind, so to 
speak, in chariots of tire, drawn by steeds of fire, 
through the obscuring clouds of form to the serene 
depth of spotless blue, of immediate absorption in the 
supreme Reality. The body is a barrier. All forms of 
art would be barriers to ideas. May be, like window- 
panes of horn, they are more transparent than walls 
of wood or stone. No panes, however, would be bet- 
ter still. 

It is the inherent spiritism of Christianity that 
produced all the deformed mediaeval art, the white- 
washed walls of Puritan meeting-houses, the exile of 
ornament and music from the sanctuary, the anti- 
sacramentalism of the Friends. 

We grant that the sacramental system itself, — the 
symbolic method of instruction with which the New 
Testament familiarizes us, — seem to give their sanction 
to art — a charter of practical perpetuity. But we 
must remember that there is no balance between sign 
and thing signified ; between idea and sensible form. 



226 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

Like a perfume that can not be imprisoned in the 
open rose, but will disembody itself and float on the 
summer air, so the infinite meaning forsakes its finite 
suggestion. The mind fastens on the idea, and for- 
gets the form ; and with this forgetting comes neglect ; 
and with the neglect of form, the decay of art. ~No 
one will argue, we believe, that the spiritism of Chris- 
tianity ever gave a healthy encouragement to art. 
Spiritism is of necessity superarrogant when con- 
fronted with the translation of spirit in material lan- 
guage. Art, so to say, takes a little of heaven and 
brings it illusively clown to earth. Religion strives to 
seize upon earth and bodily transport it into heaven. 
How can religion of the spiritual kind, whose prob- 
lem is the apotheosis of man, agree upon fair terms 
of agreement with the arts whose main effort it is to 
terrestrialize heaven, making even the Ancient of 
Days appear as infinitely " magnified man," in statue, 
painting, and poem ? 

To summarize in conclusion the results of our 
discussion. Art will thrive, hold a position of per- 
petual dignity only with monism regnant. 

It must suffer more or less from the predomi- 
nance of either materialism or spiritism. 

Under the absolutely consistent rule of positivism, 
art must perish. 

With dualism supreme, art would run great risk 
of losing a fair balance, because the dualist is so 
sure to emphasize one or the other of his uncombina- 
ble hostile twain. 

We venture to suggest that the undisputed ac- 
ceptance of monism itself might tend to injure the- 
artist, making his work too conscious a practice of a 



PERMANENCE OF ART. 227 

precise and rigid aesthetic. Who knows but that the 
predominance of no theory in particular — intellectual 
anarchy — the mutual checkmating of various theo- 
ries — leaving the artist heart-whole and fancy-free to 
follow his creative instincts — constitutes the most 
favorable condition for a robust and delight-giving 
art? In that case, what of the perpetuity of art, on 
the hypothesis of a steady growth of civilization and 
intellectual order ? 



228 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 



VI. GERHARDT HAUPTMAOTT. 

" Say what you will," wrote the morose and fan- 
tastic Bedcloes, "I am convinced the man who is to 
awaken the drama must be a bold trampling fellow, no 
creeper into worm-holes, no reviver even, however 
good. Such ghosts as Marlowe, Webster, etc., are 
better dramatists, better poets, I dare say, than any 
contemporary of ours, but they are ghosts ; the worm 
is in their pages; and we want to see something that 
our great grandsires did not know." If this be 
true — and does any one question it, when the long 
list of brilliant attempts at tragedy from the pens of 
poets of undoubted talent, nay genius, is remembered 
which have disappointed the expectations of our 
century in France, England, and Germany — if this 
be true, if our modern dramatist must bid farewell 
to Sophocles and Shakespeare and forget Seneca and 
Racine — then we may with some confidence heed the 
promptings of the heart and mind, which declare that 
after all Hauptmann may be " the man." 

One is always much embarrassed when con- 
fronted with some new thing. By what standard 
shall it be measured? Dare we allow ourselves 
to be pleased, and, still more rash, venture to ex- 
press our pleasure at something wholly unpre- 
cedented? It is all very safe to take pleasure 
in conventional fashion, along paths well fenced 
to right and left by respected criticism ; but to 
declare that in some open wilderness one has thor- 



GERHARDT HAUPTMANN. 229 

oughly enjoyed one's self, seems to argue a dash of 
reckless boldness or sheer stupidity. 

What shall we say of Hauptmann's work ? Is it 
entitled to the noble name of tragedy? He who ac- 
cepts Mr. Taine's definition of art will of course not 
be unwilling to confer the title of poem on any clever 
piece of realism. But to us, poetry is not the hand- 
maid of science, is not a mere illustrator, — a concrete 
expression of abstract truth. We have had our doubts 
as to " Mr. Sludge the Medium," and not a few other 
compositions of Mr. Browning, great poet though he 
be. Man imitates, but soon he is not content with 
imitation ; he creates, or, more correctly speaking, he 
makes his imitation yield a more unalloyed aesthetic 
pleasure than nature, on account of her very complex- 
ity, can do, except at very rare or fortunate moments. 
The brightest or noblest art, that art which nature 
can not rival, presents the ideal distinctly, quickens in 
us a certain spiritual energy by inspiring an extra- 
natural certainty that the perfect is not a spectral 
category, but one into which all things are destined in 
the end to fall. Of course, the finality of the ideal 
can be presented negatively and positively. By the 
statuary, whose marble and bronze mean permanence 
and speak of reality, the beautiful must be clearly set 
forth directly. In the poem, whose materials are in 
the last analysis successive sounds suggesting mental 
images that follow or supplant each other, materials 
that inevitably convey an impression of impermanence 
and vanity, the negative presentation of the ideal is 
more potent. Hence, in the drama, stress and sorrow 
have vanquished the ideal of peace and happiness. 
By the doom of evil and error, the survival of good 



230 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

and truth can he more effectively insinuated than by 
a futile attempt to express their permanence directly. 
We would not, therefore, insist that a poem, particu- 
larly a dramatic poem, should deal only with things 
in themselves likely and amiable. Let it make us 
feel the presence of the ideal world and we shall be 
content, no matter what its manner of structure, no 
matter what the materials it elects to fashion. Of 
course, it will ever differ from the oration, in that ora- 
tory has for its end the persuasion of us who hear, to 
move our wills and make us do or forbear from doing 
its purpose. The poem does not attempt to convince 
or persuade. It solves no problem, recommends no 
methods. It simply succeeds, if it be a true poem, in 
setting the ideal before us, and making us bow down 
to worship its perfection. If it puts any compulsion 
upon us, it is not to do this or that, but to be it. 
Therefore, we can ask of no dramatic poem that it be 
moral in the sense of ethically instructive. 

Our judgments of what is really requisite for a 
tragedy in order that it be a poem of high order, 
have been possibly confused by a narrow conception 
of beauty. Just as in the sensuous world the seem- 
ingly pleasurable must be carefully distinguished from 
the beautiful, so in the moral world what elicits our 
approval as good must be distinguished from what 
creates enthusiasm, as being again the beautiful. 
Even in the rational world the beautiful has its place. 
Philosophic systems not only convince us or fail to do 
so, but they can impress us, because of their self-suffi- 
cient coherence and exuberance of interior life, with a 
sense of their beauty. Whatever stands not in need 
of any thing else to justify its existence to us, what- 



GERHARDT HAUPTMANN. 231 

ever is conceivably its own vital end, besides arousing 
special direct feelings, stimulates indirectly our aes- 
thetic self to action. Now, the drama deals with con- 
duct. It is made up of monologues and dialogues 
implying action, not describing it. The beauty that 
we should demand of it as essential is ethical, not 
sensuous or rational. These other kinds of beauty, 
so to say, may be present, but can be conceived as ab- 
sent, without impairing the character of the drama, as 
poem, as a concrete presenter of the ideal by means 
of words. We are, of course, likely to overlook this, 
because we have had till now no great examples of 
such work which sought and won success on purely 
dramatic lines. The Greek stage was scarcely differ- 
entiated from the rostrum. Declamation, narrative, 
and oratory were still in the eyes of Sophocles legiti- 
mate dramatic means. The chorus, with its lyric odes, 
made rhythm and verbal charm an attraction, and to 
a great extent imposed them on the drama proper. 
The plays of Shakespeare discard the lyric ode. The 
oration, however, still keeps its place to some extent. 
Bits of choice language, not given because needed by 
the drama as such, but supposed to add nobility, dig- 
nity, and sweetness to it, are not rare. Nevertheless, 
we see that the drama now believes in itself, so that 
the help it gets of this adventitious sort is relatively 
insignificant when compared with its own stern and 
legitimate splendors. 

But Hauptmann ventures to create tragedies in 
which he relies on the inherent power of the drama 
alone. Verbal and stylistic beauties are abandoned. 
Yerse-forms to charm the ear are not used. And 
surely thereby the illusion of the drama is increased. 



232 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

The language is such as under given circumstances 
given characters might be expected to use with no 
external pressure, such as that used by the conscious- 
ness of a critical audience. When a tragedy of Ra- 
cine has been played, we feel it was written and 
acted for us, with us in view. Hauptmann has not 
allowed his characters to take our existence into con- 
sideration and consequently we believe them to be 
real men and women, not the puppets of the god of 
Fiction. Hauptmann has also abandoned the thought 
that the chief characters must be in themselves good 
or noble. The drama is concerned with action not 
characters. Its beauty is to be primarily that of the 
action. Its nobility and dignity must emerge from 
that and from its consequences. Hence he does not 
feel obliged to introduce us to a cloister of saints, or to 
a drawing room of gentle people. Like Shakespeare 
he goes forth into the world, but, unlike Shakespeare, 
he furnishes the characters it gives him for heroes 
with no wedding garments of conventional respecta- 
bility or social importance. For Hauptmann is 
wholly of an age in which science has made accuracy 
a virtue, anachronism distasteful, and every disguise 
and compromise of recognized truth ridiculous, not 
to say offensive. He relies for his success on the mu- 
tual action of character on character. He is unspar- 
ing in his contempt of the unideal, and the ideal is 
perhaps all the more vividly presented to our minds 
because he somehow forces our consciences to present 
it to themselves, transmuting by a vital necessity the 
despair of his catatrophe into ecstatic faith, tranced 
vision of what he has made us feel must be. 

Are there still any who will say: Why put the 



GERHARDT HAUPTMANN. 233 

evil, the ugly, and ignoble on the stage, when there 
is so much of these in the world about us ? A plausi- 
ble plea. Yet let us consider. Is it true that the 
world shows us evil as evil, ugly as ugly, ignoble as 
ignoble ? If it did, could we ever be misled into 
abandoning ideals, and condescending to unworthy 
compromise with things hideous, base, or petty? 
Surely not. If the artist can contrive to make us 
see and feel the world as it is, its evil, ugliness, and 
coarseness would be self-destructive 5 and their oppo- 
sites would appear as alone real, eternal, and capable 
therefore of giving stability and durableness to life. 
To have imparted an unreasoned personal conviction 
of the impossibility of life without goodness, nobility, 
refinement, and sweetness, is to a living man tanta- 
mount to proving their possibility, probability, nay 
their reality as though by the evidence of the very 
senses. 

To vindicate the most vigorous realism in the 
hands of a conscientious, healthy dramatist is not of 
course to say that Eacine has no charm, Sophocles 
no power, Shakespeare no completeness of illusion. 
It is simply to point out the possibility of a bare 
drama working upon us as such, without outside aid. 
To object that there is great danger in dissolving 
time honored partnerships like those referred to 
above, and that to discard the help they offer is rash 
because there will be need of greater genius to 
achieve success in such work, — equal to that of Sopho- 
cles, Racine, or Shakespeare in theirs, — is to say self- 
evident things. The question is not one of ease or 
difficulty, but one of possibility. It is first of all a 
question of creative impulse. If there is to be a 



234 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

drama of to-day it will have to be such a drama. 
Every thing points in that direction. The hopeless- 
ness of Shakespearian revivals is clear. Revivals are 
never rivals to originals. The rival of Shakespeare 
will be a realist, or will never exist. 

In Hauptmann's first great work — in some re- 
spects the most audacious and hazarded of his experi- 
ments (or shall we say achievements?), there occur some 
words on this subject that are worth quoting, though 
of course they are words suited to the character speak- 
ing them, and may be by no means expressive of the 
author's own views : — 

"Helen: Perhaps you can inform me on a matter. There is 
so much talk in the newspapers about Zola and Ibsen : are they 
great poets ? 

Loth: They are not poets at all, Miss Helen, but necessary 
evils. I am thirsty, and ask the poet to give me a clear, quick- 
ening drink. I am not ill. What Zola and Ibsen offer is medi- 
cine." 

And here we may venture to say that there is a 
great difference, which no amount of genius can ex- 
punge, between realism in the drama and realism in 
the novel. In the drama, the proportions of the pain- 
ful to the pleasurable, of the hideous to the attractive, 
are those of the author. But the novelist has no 
such power over reader as the dramatist has over the 
spectator. The reader can loiter at will in pestiferous 
fens. The reader can stop where he pleases in the 
process of the narrated events and escape altogether 
the salutary effect of the conclusion. For him, cause 
and effect, sin and suffering, are not indissolubly 
linked, and therefore the novelist may harm where 
the dramatist might do good. From the enforced 
succession of the play's various scenes there is no es- 



GERHARDT HAUPTMANN. 235 

cape. Then, too, the dramatist is understood at 
once. A hint suffices, and our system vigorously re- 
acts from the shock. The novelist must stretch out 
through pages an elaborate analysis, giving time for 
the evil, the hideous, the ignoble, to filter into the 
soul. So that, while doubtless Hauptmann out-Zolas 
Zola, he does so with a quite unexpected result, if we 
have founded our expectations on what we know of 
the novels of the Frenchman. 

From Ibsen, too, our dramatist differs very mate- 
rially. In the Norwegian's dramas, the chief charac- 
ters are usually persons, not maybe insane, surely un- 
sane. There is in them all a certain strained extror- 
dinariness which marks them out as exceptional 
people. They are morbid results of an age of transi- 
tion — "between two worlds," as Matthew Arnold ex- 
pressed it — the consequence of the deadly fend of 
science and old beliefs that have not yet re-expressed 
themselves in its terms, which, in the meanwhile, gives 
men and women over to erratic fancy, whim, and 
mania as practical guides through the maze of life. 

The characters in the dramas of Hauptmann are 
common-place, familiar beings, such as we have all 
met or can readily meet if we choose to do so. We 
need no introduction. We know them by recognition 
or intuition. Their fate, therefore, concerns us, if 
possible, more nearly than that of Ibsen's characters. 
Twenty Solnesses would have to fall from the house- 
tower to create in us the complete horror and sense of 
doom that the suggested suicide of Helen does. And 
be this said not in disparagement of Ibsen. Doubt- 
less Hauptmann and his German brother dramatists 
are the legitimate descendants of Goethe, as the poet 



236 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

of certain scenes in the First Part of Faust, but to 
Ibsen they owe much of their courage and success. 

" Vor Sonnen Aufgang" gives us a fearful picture 
of unearned wealth degrading men below the level of 
brutes. An old drunken peasant, made rich, like 
many of his neighborhood, by the discovery of coal 
on his lands, has two daughters. When his wife dies, 
the younger is sent to a boarding-school and made a 
" lady." The older one is courted and married for her 
money by a gentlemanly university student. He 
speculates with what he gets from his father-in-law, 
becomes rich in his own right, loses conscience, be- 
comes through and through corrupt. His wife is ad- 
dicted to drink. The farmer marries a coarse, inso- 
lent, ruffianly woman, made intolerable by her pride 
of wealth. Helen, the younger daughter, is brought 
back from school into this detestable environment. 
Her brother-in-law, Hoffman, ought to be a comfort 
to her, but he has sunk, in reality though not appa- 
rently, to a level below theirs. Loth, Hoffman's old 
university friend, a member of the Eeichstag, having 
been imprisoned for radical views, comes to write up 
the situation of the laboringmen in the coal fields and 
of the peasants to whom their labors bring unearned 
affluence. He hears of Hoffman's being there, visits 
him, stays with him, little by little gets his bearings, 
and finds Hoffman his irreconcilable enemy should he 
persist in his purpose. Helen falls in love with Loth, 
the first good man she has ever seen, tocher a revela- 
tion of hitherto undreamed possibilities. Loth pities 
and loves Helen, but does not know of her father's 
and sister's hopeless drunkenness. The family phy- 
sician called in to attend Hoffman's wife chances to 



GERHARDT HAUPTMANN. 237 

be an old friend of Loth, and he makes up his mind 
to save him from the fearful curse of marrying a 
drunkard's daughter. The law of heredity is wielded 
mercilessly by this cynical little bachelor physician, 
till Loth in a frenzy takes flight and leaves Helen no 
visible escape but suicide from the infectious vileness 
about her. 

A terrible subject, awfully handled. Already in 
this first play Hauptraann succeeds in giving us the 
background so cleverly, by quite natural chance hints, 
that we can hardly tell how we got to know all we do 
about the previous history of the family. There is no 
narrative, no relation irrelevant from the point of 
view of the characters on the stage, no mechanical 
devices for giving us a clue. 

We can readily understand that this piece should 
have been made a battle ground between old school 
and new school. It was for the new movement what 
Hernani was for the literary France of the first half 
of our century. His next drama is " Das Friedens- 
fest." Here the thesis is that disparity of education 
and instruction, and the consequent diversity of in- 
terests, manners, and moral standard, make congenial 
felicity and home life impossible. These children of 
a wrecked union are mutually repellant personalities. 
All have more or less excellent intentions, and all 
have made each other miserable with a persistency 
that seems deliberate and wicked to each one when 
viewing the rest. One only might be saved by his 
love of music which takes him out of himself. He 
loves a sweet, simple girl. Her mother persuades 
her daughter's lover, whom she has taken into her 
genial heart as a son, that he must make heroic 



Z€>0 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

efforts and bring about a general family reconciliation 
with her aid. The attempt is made at fearful cost and 
fails. William determines not to marry the girl he 
loves lest he should make her wretched, too, but the 
girl, with eyes open to all the tiger-life of William's 
family, trusts to him and love, in spite of William's 
self and her own mother. 

Never was a more ghastly picture drawn of a 
wrecked home. A mere unwillingness to give each 
other the benefit of the doubt, the unhesitating as- 
cription of malignant motives to each other, have un- 
dermined a family, and ruined morally every member 
of it but one, who is saved, as it were by fire, through 
the instrumentality of an unselfish devotion to a noble 
art, and contact with two noble self-oblivious women, 
both of whom he loves, one as mother, the other as 
betrothed. 

" Einsame Menschen " — "Lonely Souls" — is a 
marvelous study of how we can not lift ourselves, 
ethically, above our age; how we may think, but can 
not with impunity attempt to feel and act apart from 
it. What was meant as pure and disinterested is 
besmirched by suspicions, natural to those on a lower 
ethical plane, and actually becomes, through the instru- 
mentality of those suspicious, what it falsely seemed to 
them to be. According to our social conventions any 
relation between man and woman, intimate and real, 
which is not imposed by physical affinity, or can not 
seek refuge beneath the wings of monogamous mar- 
riage, is a priori sinfuL Consequently a purely intel- 
lectual and spiritual friendship between the married 
hero and a clever, fascinating young woman is com- 
pelled to assume first an appearance, and then a 



GEKHAKDT HAUPTMANN. 239 

character, such as would conflict with the wife's claim 
to exclusive loyalty and love. An extremely painful 
subject to be sure; but its treatment is conscientious, 
and leaves the sonl sick with longing for a world in 
which the spirit shall rule, and the flesh neither in- 
trude, nor dare to bring aspersions against the exercise 
of its divine freedom of intercourse with spirit. 
What a sweetly pathetic picture, that noble, unjealous 
self-belittling wife, who, if her husband only knew, 
could become whatever he chose ! If only "this too, 
too solid flesh would melt ! " But it does not at man's 
bidding; — heeding only the slow working laws of 
social progress. 

" Die Weber," which has been acted with success 
in America, is not, of course, as some of our press 
critics have asserted, a Socialistic drama, still less one 
whose authorship could be in cold blood — or rather 
let us say in cold printer's ink — ascribed to a certain 
cisatlantic anarchist! It simply presents a strike, 
makes it live before us, shows us the misery that oc- 
casions it, and the misery it occasions ; leaves us pro- 
foundly convinced of the solidarity of society, and the 
need that our conscience should correspond to our 
consciousness of that fact. But of this drama so 
much has been said and written that it were supere- 
rogatory to rehearse the story here. What impresses 
one chiefly, however, is that in this piece we are not 
dealing with the individuals, so vividly presented, as 
much as with masses of individuals. The interest in- 
heres in the cause, not in particular cases. The 
catastrophe does not involve any main promoter of 
the movement so far as the spectator sees, but only 
an innocent, great-hearted protestor. The movement 



240 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

then is the hero; it has many and various repre- 
sentatives, and when we have heard and seen the 
play, the actual human world has been before us in 
process of evolution, an evolution in which indi- 
viduals are sacrificed to the clearer manifestation of 
the type. 

But what shall we say of " Hannele " * and the 
savage attacks it suffered when represented in New 
York? Immoral is it, and blasphemous? Must 
American morals be protected from its insidious in- 
fluence ? Did our self-constituted censors mean their 
violent protest seriously, or was it but a boyish April- 
fool prank out of season — an acted satire on defunct 
puritan prejudice — an experiment to prove the good 
nature of a free public? There are many varieties 
and degrees of excellence. Some books stand out 
colossal from the background of past reading. Others 
have a marble moonlight whiteness, an outline 
solemnly simple, a columnar symmetry, a statuesque 
nobility. Others again are mere flowers with road- 
side modesty, with a childlike grace, and so captivating 
a perfume, rare and faintly exquisite, that we would 
rather see the colossus, the cathedral, the temple, the 
statue overthrown and demolished, than have this one 
quivering thing, all alive with delicate feeling, ruffled 
by too rough a wind, wilted by a touch too coarse. 
Now, " Hannele," the little stranger from overseas 
which was so inhospitably treated by our New York 
volunteer censors of the stage, is one of those master- 
pieces that defy criticism. It is too winning and 
affecting to permit of unbiased scrutiny. From he- 



Translated by William Archer Heinemann, London, '94. 



GERHARDT HAUPTMANN. 241 

ginning to end, excepting a few songs, it is one quick, 
nervous dialogue. It is quite as realistic in treatment 
as any other piece of Hauptmann. He has made us 
acquainted in it with a bit of the world in which we 
actually live. Nor has he chosen some favored spot 
in it, where the envied few delight to dwell. It is a 
patch of common soil, not beautiful in itself, but the 
sort of thing we have all about us. The illumination 
is such as to impart to every thing a preternatural 
glory. He takes one human lot, but we know that 
behind it are the terrible millions. To make us feel 
more keenly, the lot is that of a child, the motherless 
little step -daughter of a brutalized drunkard. Noth- 
ing could be simpler or more original. A painstaking 
study in child-psychology was not unheard of before 
" Hannele," but was there ever such a study ? Fur- 
thermore, it is the psychology of its dream state, less 
fettered, more subtly self- revealing, which is boldly 
set forth as real to us, quite as though we had been 
entranced, and made to feel the child's fever pulse 
throbbing in our own arteries. But this " dream 
play" has been recently translated into English, and 
its plot need not detain us here. By it Hauptmann 
may be known to those who watch the signs in our 
literary heavens. What then shall we say of it, and 
of Hauptmann ? 

Shall we venture to assert that Gerhard t Haupt- 
mann's work answers to the great modern demand 
for a new drama that may be to us what Shakes- 
peare's was to Elizabethan England ? In our world 
in which aristocracies are obsolescent, if not obsolete, 
with the vastly altered social conditions which we 
ascribe to machinery and popular government, can we 



242 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

feel quite satisfied by dramatic work which does not 
present us the problems of life in their present com- 
plex form ? And after all has been said, was not 
Shakespeare a realist? Did he not give us Eliza- 
bethan England upon the stage ? What with us is 
literary affectation, when appearing in the work of 
Beddoes, for instance, was natural and necessary then. 
To-day life is sterner. Life is arrayed in less showy 
colors. We are more matter of fact. The imagination 
plays no great part in the life of our privileged classes. 
Oratory is not the power it was. Facts have been 
made to speak with figures for mouthpiece. 

But to attempt a judgment of contemporary genius is 
folly. Time alone is the winnower. Whatever may be 
said against "Before Sunrise" and "The Weavers," — 
and there is much that can be said with much plausibil- 
ity, — the charge of "brutal realism" can not be main- 
tained against " Hannele." If any thing could convince 
us that the drama of actual life, using its language, 
abandoning all traditional elegance, rhetorical exag- 
geration, in a word, all stage strut and stage rant, 
can attain to higher glories than the classicist sup- 
posed possible, it would be this piece, the effect of 
which is that of the work of an idealist infinitely 
strengthened by the realistic method. And in the 
long run, it seems clear that the victory is to the 
Goethe of Faust, not to the Goethe of Iphigenia, to 
Heine and not to Schiller, in spite of the latter' s no- 
bleness of aim. We want to be shown the loftily 
tragic in the actual. Thus will our daily burden- 
bearing seem less ignoble, and our drudgery may ac- 
quire a majesty of its own. We want to be told, as 
only the poet can tell us, that it is the human soul, 



GERHARDT HAUPTMANN. 243 

not the circumstances of life, that makes our dignity; 
not intellectual achievements and polish, only possible 
to the few, but moral worth, that distinguishes the 
hero from the common man ; and how can this be 
more forcibly set forth than by the selection of cir- 
cumstances adverse to outer dignity, refinement, and 
culture, notwithstanding which — nay, over which, — 
the soul is made to triumph ? 



244 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 



VI. WALT WHITMAN. 

(The Camden Sage.) 

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

A man of genius has his phases of inner growth, . . . 
and to look for a narrow, definite, consistent body of doctrine in 
his writings is to look for something that is not there, that was 
never intended to be there, and that could not, in the very nature 
of things, have been there.* 

Doubtless something of this sort was in Walt 
Whitman's mind when he wrote : 

I charge you forever reject those who would expound ine, for I 

can not expound myself. 
I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me. 
I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free. 

—(Myself and Mine, p. 190.) t 

He had grown. Like Emerson, he cared nothing 
for mere mechanical consistency. 

Do I contradict myself ? 

Very well, then, I contradict myself, (p. 78.) 

Besides, the individual need not consciously 
trouble himself about being consistent. Life will see 
to it that he be not. Life is change. Remaining the 
same is but wearing a mask, or it is death. There is, 
however, a beautiful continuity in every energetic ca- 



* " Walt Whitman," by Wm. Clarke, p. 105. (Macmillan & 
Co., 1892.) 

t All references are to the complete edition of Whitman's 
works, in two volumes. David McKay, Philadelphia. The sim- 
ple figures refer to pages in "Leaves of Grass;" those prefixed 
Pr., to the companion volume of Complete Prose Works. 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 245 

reer. You find nothing in it which, when you know 
the whole, you think might not have been predicted 
at the outset. Yet it was not, because, as a matter of 
fact, it could not be foreseen. 

'No man has given us more self-criticism, proba- 
bly, of a frank, helpful sort, than Whitman. His 
large volume of prose is practically a commentary on 
his poetic work. He shows that, in a sense, he cer- 
tainly could expound himself. His was no incoherent 
message. He received it gradually, and gave it as he re- 
ceived it ; but nevertheless it constitutes a vital whole. 

Avowals of irreconcilable tenets — alternate affirmations and 
denials, that seem the utterances of some concord transcendental - 
ist, who should have lost his wits, and never gone in search of 
them to any purpose.* 

Had I not committed these words to that terrible 
Satan, the printed page, I should not believe that I 
understood Whitman so ill eight years ago. 

We have a right to demand that there shall be in the sev- 
eral tenets upheld symptoms at least of a possible reconciliation. 

After diligently reading "Leaves of Grass," and 
constructing an index for ready reference to its con- 
tents, I still felt obliged to save the author's sanity 
by supposing he often did not mean what he said ! 
So difficult is Whitman to some of us when we ap- 
proach him for the first time ! 
I, too, . . . inaugurate a religion, 
Each is not for its own sake. 

I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for relig- 
ion's sake. 
I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough. 
Know you, solely to drop in the earth the germs of a,. greater re- 
ligion, 
The following chants, each for its kind, I sing. (p. 23.) 

* " The Apostle of Chaotism." See Appendix. 



246 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

If Walt Whitman, then, has rightly conceived 
of his own mission, it is by a consideration of him as 
a religious teacher that we shall do well to approach 
his work. 

I have arrived 

To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe, 
For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them. (p. 27.) 
Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed and shall bless 

me. (p. 123.) 
Listen ! I will be honest with you. 
I do not offer the old, smooth prizes, but offer rough, new prizes. 

-(p. 126.) 
I myself am not one who bestows nothing upon man and woman, 
For I bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the 

gifts of the universe, (p. 216.) 

Language so definite as this, so tremendous in 
import, passes beyond all hyperbolic license, unless, 
indeed, he has a " new religion," a "greater one," to 
impart. We have a right to ask him for a redemp- 
tion of promises so amazing, which should he fail to 
do, one could hardly help but class him among mega- 
lomaniacs — with Professor Lombroso.* 

Who has read " Specimen Days," and not felt the 
loveableness of the man ? What beautiful strength 
and tenderness ! His magnetism is irresistible. Then, 
too, the witness of his friends ! What friends ! Who 
was so worshiped by those who knew him ? What 
self-oblivious tenderness and great-hearted enthusiasm 
did he not elicit ? The "good gray poet " indeed ! It 



* " The Man of Genius," by Cesare Lombroso. Charles Scrib- 
ner's Sons, New York, 1895. For the construction of the above 
sentence, I have no apology to offer. Ambiguity is often a merit. 
Cf. p. 45 of Lombroso's book. 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 247 

is quite in vain he attempts to repel one. He tries to 

shock us : 

Walt. Whitman, a Kosmos, of Manhattan the son, 
Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking, and breeding. 

-(p. 48.) 
He insinuates doubts : 

Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal? 

Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a 
real heroic man ? 

Have you no thought, dreamer, that it may be all maya, illu- 
sion? (p. 103.) 

It is useless for him to speak of 
The silent manner of me without charm, (p. 105.) • 

His defiant, rude treatment of us does not dis- 
courage us. We still — shocked though we may think 
ourselves, and angry with him — hear something in us 
that says, as Emerson is reported to have exclaimed : 
" What a man !" And we want to know him better, 
to understand and test his gospel. If it could give us 
the secret of his great faith in humanity, for instance, 
we should be well rewarded for much endurance of his 
bearish buffeting. 

But we ask ourselves, what does Walt Whitman 
mean by religion? Does he not bid us " be not cu- 
rious about God ?" (p. 76.) And what can he mean 
by driving all the gods from all the heavens like cattle 
to the crack of his whip — his " barbaric yawp " sound- 
ing "over the roofs of the world" (p. 78), into the 
shambles of his " egotism," for his " omnivorous 
lines" (p. 69) to devour? The ordinary reader is 
horrified at this greedy ogre, who eats gods instead of 
children ! {Of. p. 67.) It is amazing, too, — rather a 
shock to one's old-fashioned notions, — to have a wedge 
literally driven with sledge-hammer blows into the com- 



248 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

pact Trinity to make room for Satan ! Is it a whim- 
sical prejudice against the venerable triangle which 
makes him attempt to forge on his anvil a " square 
deific?" (p. 839.) One wonders, somewhat irrever- 
ently, how Satan feels between God the Son and God 
the Hoty Ghost; whether he thanks the Camden sage 
for such unforseen promotion to uncomfortable glory 
from his old "bad eminence" in Milton's epic. But, 
upon reflection, all such questions turn out to be irrel- 
evant. To Whitman, all these divine names represent 
no persons. For him, they are 

Eidolons, eidolons, eidolons, (p. 13.) 
Eough deific sketches to fill out better in myself, (p. 67.) 

They are 

Outlines I plead for my brothers and sisters, (p. 78.) 

In plain terms, they are ideals mankind has pro- 
posed to itself for attainment. They have been em- 
bodied in myth, anchored in historic personages, pre- 
cipitated by theologians as dogma in the test tube of 
unimaginative reason. It is for us to realize what, 
taken together, they mean, namely, a divine revelation 
of our possibilities, which they were fashioned ex- 
pressly to hand down from age to age, until men 
could once more have access for themselves to the 
kingdom of God within them. 

1. WHAT IS RELIGION? 

We must not be daunted by paradox. Let us 
turn to Whitman's prose to glean a definition of re- 
ligion, after we have first weighed the significant fact 
that he was of Quaker descent, and that he thought it 



WHAT IS RELIGION? 249 

worth while to write of Elias Hicks and George Fox 
as follows : 

Doubtless the greatest scientists and theologians will some- 
times find themselves saying: "It is not only those who know T 
most who contribute most to God's glory." Doubtless these very 
scientists at times stand with bared heads before the humblest 
lives and personalities. For there is something greater (is there 
not?) than all the science and poems of the world — above all 
else, like the stars shining eternal — above Shakespeare's plays, or 
Concord philosophy, or art of Angelo or Eaphael, something 
that shines illusive, like beams of Hesperus at evening — high 
above all the vaunted wealth and pride — proved by its practical 
outcropping in life, each case after its own concomitants, the in- 
tuitive blending of divine love and faith in a human emotional 
character — blending for all, for the unlearned, the common, and 
the poor. (Pr., p. 472.) 

What is poor, plain George Fox compared with William 
Shakespeare — to fancy's lord, imagination's heir? Yet George 
Fox stands for something, too, a thought, the thought that wakes 
in silent hours — perhaps the deepest, most eternal thought latent 
in the human soul. . This is the thought of God, merged in the 
thoughts of moral right, and the immortality of identity. Great, 
great is this thought — aye, greater than all else, . . . the only 
certain source of what all are seeking, but few or none find — in it 
I for myself see the first, the last, the deepest depths and highest 
heights of art, of literature, and of the purposes of life. I say, 
whoever labors here, makes contributions here, or, best of all, sets 
an incarnated example here, of life or death — is dearest to hu- 
manity—remains after the rest are gone. And here, for these 
purposes, and up to the light that was in him, the man Elias 
Hicks — as the man George Fox had done years before him — lived 
long, and died, faithful in life, and faithful in death. (Pr., p. 476.) 

I have transcribed these two paragraphs because 
they are likely to help the perplexed student to a 
better understanding of Whitman. He can not bear 
to have abstractions compete for our interest with men 
and women. Better than any theology is a man. 
Better than any metaphysical idea of God is a woman. 



250 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

(p. 175.) It is after all the idea of the diety incar- 
nated by avatars in human form (p. 115) that alone 
seriously interests him. 

He sees eternity in men and women ; he does not see men 
and women as dreams or dots. (p. 270.) 

" In the faces of men and women," he sees " God," 
and in his " own face in the glass." (p. 76.) Every 
thing is for the soul's sake. To be of worth, it must 
contribute to the soul. " The universe itself" is 
merely " a road . . . for traveling souls." (p. 127.) 

What then is religion? A state of the soul? 
"What then is God? A vision the soul obtains of 
itself? According to Whitman, these would be fair 
definitions. And in these definitions he would not be 
straying far from Quakerism as he understood it. 

The true Christian religion (such was the teaching of Elias 
Hicks) consists neither in rites, or bibles, or sermons, or Sundays, 
but in noiseless, secret ecstasy and unremitted aspiration, in 
purity, in a good practical life, in charity to the poor and tolera- 
tion to all. . . . He believed little in church as organized, 
. . . but he believed always in the Universal Church, in the 
soul of man, invisibly rapt, ever-waiting, ever-responding to uni- 
versal truths. (Pr., note, p. 464). * 

It is the doctrine of " the light within " which 
constitutes the vital core of Quakerism. Walt Whit- 
man perceives a kinship thus between Fox and Hicks 
and Plato. It is the same " doctrine that the ideals 
of character, of justice, of religious action, whenever 

* Whitman views religion as essentially unsocial : " I should 
say, indeed, that only in the perfect uncontamination and soli- 
tariness of individuality may the spirituality of religion posi- 
tively come forth at all. Only here, and on such terms, the mani- 
festations, the devout ecstasy, the soaring flight," etc. The rest of 
this interesting paragraph is well worth referring to. "Democratic 
Vistas." (Pr., p. 233.) 



WHAT IS RELIGION? 251 

the highest is at stake, are to be conformed to no out- 
side doctrine of creeds, bibles, legislative enactments, 
conventionalities, or even decorums, but are to follow 
the inward deity-planted law of the emotional soul." 
(Pr., p. 465.) In his prefatory note (Pr., p. 455), he 
comments on Hicks as " pointing to the fountain of 
all . . . religion . . . in yourself and your in- 
herent relations." " Others talk of bibles, etc., . . . 
the canons outside of yourself," . . . but Elias 
Hicks points "to the religion inside of man's very 
own nature." 

The point at which Walt Whitman takes issue 
with Elias Hicks is the Quaker's thorough exclusive be- 
lief in the Hebrew scriptures. Walt Whitman has 
not restricted himself to them, so that his own reli- 
gion- might be termed a Quakerism cut loose con- 
sistently from the last shadow of external authority, 
not substituting for the Bible any concensus even of 
all the sacred books of the world. Nor is he unap- 
preciative of these. Only he observes : 

I do not say they are not divine ; 
I say they have all grown out of you. and may grow out of you 

still. 
It is not they who give the life ; it is you who give the life. 
Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth, 

than they are shed from you. — (p. 172.) 

If it is possible for the soul to get " passage in- 
deed to primal thought," to its " own clear fresh- 
ness," to "realms of budding bibles" (p. 320), why 
should a man any longer " take things at second or 
third hand," or "look through the eyes of the dead," 
or " feed on the specters of books ? " Why not " filter 
them from oneself?" (p. 30.) Even the "saviours" 
are " countless," but only historical or mythical names 



252 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

for " saviours latent within " oneself, where "bibles" 
" equal to any " can be unclasped and read. (p. 350.) 
The " outside authority" ought always to enter after 
the precedence of inside authority, (p. 153.) With 
such a rigid test as his, u outside authority " in the 
matter of spiritual beliefs, it is clear there can be 
none. It is, to be sure, only the old Catholic test, the 
u ab omnibus" which, with the Christian traditionalist, 
however, always carefully excludes the heretic as 
though he were non-existent. The appeal was to the 
universal consensus, but the nature of what the con- 
sensus ought to be was so preassumed as to eliminate 
objectionable factors. With Whitman there is no 
such petitio principii. 

Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so. 
Only what nobody denies is so. (p. 83.) 

As for the " inside authority " it is challenged 
and brought into play by the outside world : 

All truths wait in all things, (p. 53). 

All truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so concealed 
either, 

They are calm, subtle, intransmissible by print. 

They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves will- 
ingly, 

Conveying a sentiment and invitation, (p. 176.) 

The tests of truth are always, 

Inner, serene, unapproachable to analysis, in the soul, 
Not traditions, not the outer authorities are the judges, 
They are the judges of outer authorities and of all traditions. 

—(p. 305.) 
In fact, 

Whatever satisfies souls is true. (p. 201.) 
If your soul is diseased it can not be trusted. 
Yet, again, you would have to trust your soul as to 



WHAT IS RELIGION ? 253 

what healthier man should be made your test. For 
of course arguments do not convince. They usually 
are excuses the soul furnishes to the mechanical side 
of itself for entertaining certain convictions. In the 
last analysis " outside authority " invariably turns out 
to be " inside authority," more or less arbitrarily at- 
tached to some exterior symbol. 

How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed ! 

How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a man's 

or woman's look ! 
All waits or goes by default till a strong being appears ; 
A strong being is the proof of the race and of the ability of the 

universe. 
When he or she appears materials are overawed, 
The dispute on the soul stops, 
The old customs and phrases are confronted, turned back, or laid 

away. (p. 153.) 

Of course the great man can not directly en- 
lighten us, but though " Wisdom can not be passed 
from one having it to another not having it," though 
" Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof," 
yet " Something there is in the float of the sight of 
things that provokes it out of the soul." (p. 123). 
And no sight is so potent to elicit wisdom from our 
souls as the sight of the wise man. When in doubt of 
my very being, "A morning glory at my window 
satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books." 
(p. 39.) More than " a university course," and the 
learned memories with which it has stored the soul, 
"A slumbering woman and child convince." (p. 175.) 

I see the sleeping babe nestling the breast of its mother, 

The sleeping mother and babe hushed, I study them long and 

long. (p. 217.) 

And the last resort always will be to the touch of 



254 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

a loving hand. All "the terrible doubt of appear- 
ances " is answered : 

When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while hold- 
ing me by the hand, 
When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and 

reason hold not, surround us and pervade us, 
Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am 

silent, I require nothing further, 
I can not answer the question of appearances or that of identity 

beyond the grave, 
But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied, 
He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me. (p. 175.) 

Who that has been with his fellow-men in their 
sorest need has not found that all one man can do for 
another is to be himself strong, convinced, patient, 
and to press the sick or dying doubter's hand ten- 
derly ? 

Considering, however, the extent to which he 
carries out all its implications, we ought not to be 
amazed when we find Walt Whitman's doctrines of 
the inner light admitting of companions from lands 
and literatures strange to Christendom. The doctrine 
of a spiritual body of St. Paul of Tarsus, Emanuel 
Swedenborg, and William Blake hobnobs goodna- 
turedly with a metempsychosis doctrine definitely 
indicated; while a doctrine of cosmic cycles faintly 
looms up in the distance ; and Vedantic views are at 
times expressed with such originality and energy as 
to have brought a smile of delight to the serene im- 
mobile countenance of a Hindu friend, to whom I 
read them. 

The negative and positive poles, as it were, of 
Whitman's current of religion can be pointed out now 
in his own words. On the one hand we have the 
" divine pride of a man in himself — the radical foun- 



WHAT IS RELIGION? 255 

dation of the new religion " (Pr., p. 246) ; oil the other 
hand " religious " is defined to mean " possessing the 
idea of the infinite." (Pr., p. 238.) The true thing 
itself, strictly speaking, is neither, but their union : 

Yet I in this dull scene . . . why am I so (almost) happy 
here and alone ? Why would any intrusion even from people I 
like spoil the charm ? But am I alone? Doubtless there comes a 
time— perhaps it has come to me— when one feels through his 
whole being, and pronouncedly in the" emotional part, that 
identity between himself subjectively and nature objectively 
which Schelling and Fichte are so fond of pressing. How it is, 
I know not, but I often realize a presence here— in clear moods I 
am certain of it (Pr., p. 105). 

Some "vital unseen presence" (Pr., p. 99) haunts 
for as cold nature — a ghost maybe of ourself. " The 
victorious fusion " in man " of the Real and Ideal," 
which the poet sets forth, is Religion. (Pr., p. 398.) 

But Walt. Whitman puts the matter, I conceive, 
once more in different terms : 

Great — unspeakably great — is the Will ! the free Soul of man. 
(Pr., p. 336.) 

Something that fully satisfies — that something is the All, and 
the idea of the AU r etc. (Pr., p. 253.) I have the idea of all,, 
and am all, and believe in all. (p. 192.) 

" The eternal soul of man " (Pr., p. 286) is to be 
saved — freed — by union with this "Idea of the All." 
" Liberty," he tells us is not " release from all law." 

The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws, 
namely, the fusion and combination of the conscious will, or par- 
tial individual law, with those universal, eternal unconscious 
ones which run through all Time, pervade history, prove immor- 
tality, give moral purpose to the entire objective world, and the 
last dignity to human life. (Pr., p. 337.) 

The whole matter is restated in a note to his es- 
say, "Poetry To-day in America." (Pr., p. 299.) The 
" conscious will " is to be reconciled to the ■" great uncon- 



256 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

scious and abysmic second will." The soul is to 
" cheerfully range itself under universal laws, and 
embody them." 

But unfamiliar with oriental speculations, or not 
possessing a sure grasp of the principle of " inner 
light " and what it logically leads to (particularly as 
the Friends never followed it out to the end, re- 
strained, unconsciously by the language of Christian 
theological tradition), there may be those who find it 
difficult to represent to themselves the position of 
Whitman. Another method of approach may per- 
haps serve them in good stead. I shall allow myself, 
therefore, a brief abstract disquisition, with no intent 
of converting them to Whitman, or any notion of 
stating personal views. 

There are the great ecstatic moments of the soul. 
Strange moments ! * To some they have come in na- 
ture, to others " at a meeting ;" to some from an idea, 
to others from an ideal ; to some meditating on scien- 
tific law, to others in poetic dreams ; to some during 
metaphysical speculations, to others when confronted 
with a living character. In every instance, however, 
the rapture was of the same nature. The soul became 
fluid feeling, and embraced the visible universe as the 
ocean would an island; and now the man has ebbed 
back to his ordinary self, the old indefinite extent of 
conscious feeling at ecstatic high tide is thought to ex- 
ist, apart from him, centered outside of him. There 
arises thus a painful sense of the gap between the self 
of ecstasy and the self of ordinary thought and feel- 
ing. Having once experienced the blissful oblitera- 



te. Emerson's Essay on the " Over Soul. 



WHAT IS KELIGION? 257 

tion of all hostility to the soul, the momentary swal- 
lowing up of all that claims to be independent of the 
sonl by the soul, one can never again be rid of hun- 
ger and thirst for the renewal of the experience at 
least in some degree. All beautiful arts, all religious 
organizations, are separate efforts to accomplish this. 
Those with whom these means are invariably success- 
ful, let an overflow of gratitude glorify them. They 
praise with enthusiasm statue, picture, symphony, so- 
ciety, creed. The experience thus tends to become all 
the more readily an empty tradition. Those who 
have not had it very naturally suppose that the works 
of art or the theological doctrines and ecclesiastical 
rites are in themselves the end, instead of mere means 
to this spiritual ecstasy. Occasionally such formalists 
stumble on the true meaning of the doctrines they 
have received. More often are men initiated by ex- 
treme sorrows and despairs. Then they wonder 
they could have so long handled holy things without 
the knowledge of their true purpose, when, after all, 
they bear the stamp of it so plainly upon them for 
him who has eyes and sees. 

Isow, one reason so few understand this mystic se- 
cret of religion according to this exposition, is the 
difficulty of suggesting it by any word. Lay the 
stress on the ordinary state of man — the so-called real, 
or actual — more properly termed the apparent, and. 
the obvious danger is that we shall consider the so- 
called Ideal (more properly the Real) as a god, in- 
finitely different from us ; and then, passing by use 
of language to anthropomorphism — the difference will 
be construed as a quarrel : — a sin on our part and a 
wrath on his. Atonement in order to Communion, 



258 



MODERN POET PROPHETS. 



becomes then easily a reconciliation through external 
mediators and through sacrifices — the teachers being 
the historic basis for the former, their sufferings 
or the hardships necessary to attainment of the 
Ideal, giving an objective or subjective rationale to the 
latter. Of such a nature, it may be argued, are all 
exoteric religions. The esoteric side of every religion, 
however, lays the stress, not on the apparent, but the 
Real. The mystic turns his eyes inward. He can not 
gaze upon the real core of his own being. That 
phantom-self vanishes as he approaches, until the 
mystery is nameless, awful, infinite. So he recognizes 
in the unfathomable abyss within, the self of hours 
of ecstacy. He may call it " God," adopt all the 
language of his un mystical brethren, but for him it 
has a new significance. Whether he adopts or not 
their terms he knows it as Self. The danger, how- 
ever, appears very soon. To communicate his mean- 
ing is well-nigh impossible. In all probability the 
uninitiated who accepts the mystic as his authority 
deludes himself, anticipates results, and progress is 
paralyzed. He thinks there is nothing to do. Be- 
cause he knows the divine is the Real in him, he 
takes no pains to transform the apparent, actual man. 
He gives the flesh, maybe the full license of the spirit, 
and is immoral on the pretext of being above moral- 
ity. The dualist, emphasizer of the apparent, becomes 
contrariwise in all probability, if he be in earnest, a 
ehastiser of himself. Thus antinomianism and asceti- 
cism are the two penalties men pay for embracing 
either horn of the dilemma, and misunderstanding 
the true meaning : — a G-od without — viewed as sepa- 
rate, hostile, to be reconciled by self-imposed hard- 



WHAT IS RELIGION ? 259 

ships; a God within — viewed as really at one with the 
worshiper, and therefore the premature assumption of 
divine freedom ! Many Mystics strive to overcome 
the difficulty by using' both lines of expression alter- 
nately, and thus, by oscillation between extremes, to 
indicate what they believe to-be the true mean. 

Xow, Walt Whitman prefers to speak of the 
potential as actual, to call God, Self, as a rule ; though 
he tries to obviate misconstructions by occasional use 
of other language, and a constant emphasis on the 
thought of growth or the Hegelian u becoming." 
Change is a death and a birth. What is must cease 
to be in order that what is to be may come into 
being. We have had talk of " death unto the 
flesh," and " birth from above," with equivalent 
phrases, more or less understood, for now nine- 
teen centuries. Whitman prefers to use the con- 
ception of evolution or growth instead of those 
two terms which together express the same thought. 
He uses the word " death" to indicate the unknown 
life. He adds often the adjective "heavenly," lest he 
be misunderstood to mean by " death " the dissolution 
of the body or of the soul. Yet, in spite of every 
effort to be clear, he is steadily misunderstood by most 
readers for years, unless they have chanced to study 
the Idealist philosophers of Germany, the Mystics of 
Christian centuries, the Neoplatonists, or, better yet, 
for interpreting Emerson and Whitman, the Bhagavad 
Gita. 

2. DIVINE PRIDE. 

Let us consider, now, first, what Whitman calls 
"the radical foundation of the new religion:" the 
"divine pride in one's self." His last words of criti- 



260 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

cism upon this point will be found in "A Backward 
Glance O'er Travel'd Roads." (Appendix to Leaves 
of Grass, p. 435.) 

" I think this pride indispensable to an American. 
I think it not inconsistent with obedience, humanity, 
deference, and self-questioning." 

It is no more than fair to accept his own definition 
of terms. Whatever would be wholly inconsistent 
with these states of mind and heart is then not what 
Whitman means by "pride." One is free, no doubt, 
to reprehend his use of the word. Perhaps, however, 
it will not be so easy to find a less objectionable 
term. 

And here, in considering the attitude Whitman 
takes toward his present undeveloped self because of 
its great, unspeakable destiny, we can not too forcibly 
remind ourselves that he does not say these things of 
himself as other than us; that he really means to put 
them in our mouths : 

I will effuse egotism and show it underlying all. (p. 24.) 

I celebrate niyself and sing myself, 

And what I assume you shall assume, (p. 29.) 

All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own, 

Else it were time lost listening to me. (p. 44.) 

It is you talking just as much as myself; I act as the tongue 

of you, 
Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosened, (p. 75.) 
I know perfectly well my own egotism, 
Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less, 
And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself, (p. 69.) 

He hints that in the "Answerer," or Maker of 
Ideals, men ought not to, and do not, revere another, 
whatever they may fancy: 



DIVINE PRIDE. 261 

Him they accept, in hiin lave, in him perceive themselves as amid 

light, (p. 134.) 

If not, how could the "Answerer" or Messiah be 
of use to men ? 

And, finally, in order that his object in singing 
himself may be clear to all, he uses the pronoun 
" you" in the following lines, as Avell as in the glorious 
poem, " To You : " (p. 186.) 

Whoever you are ! motion and reflection are especially for you, 

The divine ships sail the divine sea for you. 

Whoever you are ! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid 

and liquid ; 
You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky, 
For none more than you are the present and the past, 
For none more than you is immortality. 
Each man to himself and each woman to herself is the word of 

the past and the present, and the true word of immortality ; 
No one can acquire for another— not one, 
Not one can grow for another — not one, . . . 
And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, 

or the indication of his own. (p. 178.) 

Let no reader, then, be any more disturbed by 
Lombrosian qualms at Whitman's supposed " Megalo- 
mania." The very essence of the disease is absurd 
exaltation of oneself at the expense of one's neigh- 
bor ; while Whitman's egotism is displayed only to en- 
gender the like in his reader, which, whatever one 
may think of it, is quite a different thing. Neverthe- 
less, the manner of Walt Whitman is so frankly ar- 
rogant, he urges such extraordinary claims for us, that 
many a beginner insists on not taking him at his word 
and on supposing he meant all these vast attributes 
and defiant attitudes to be descriptive only of his 
private personality ! On this point, at the risk of 
being tedious, one can not lay too much stress. Stand- 



262 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

ing at the grave of Emerson, Whitman uttered these 
words : * 

A just man, poised on himself, all-loving, all inclosing and 
sane and clear as the sun. Nor does it seem so much Emerson 
himself we are here to honor— it is conscience, simplicity, cult- 
ure, humanity's attributes at their best, yet applicable, if need be, 
to average affairs, and eligible to all. (Pr., p. 197.) 

Elsewhere in a very interesting critique on Emer- 

sou, he says of him : 

His final influence is to make his students cease to worship 
any thing — almost cease to believe in any thing outside of them- 
selves. (Pr., p. 320.) 

low, Whitman would not have us do this 
"almost," but altogether: — 

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things 

from me, 
You shall listen to all sides and filter them for yourself, (p. 30.) 

What were the advantage cutting us loose from 
all glorious traditions, if he should, in his turn, become 
one himself, and repress our development from within, 
which he held as the one law of sterling manhood? 
Not I, nor any one else, can travel that road for you, 
You must travel it for yourself, (p. 73.) 

Besides, he definitely teaches " straying from him- 
self :" (p. 75.) 

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to no one else. 

-(p. 17.) 
And he puts it very unmistakably in fourteen lines, 
using the figure of the " teacher of athletes," which 
end : — 

He most honors my style' who learns under it to destroy the 
teacher, (p. 74.) 

In this matter surely he has been less of an ego- 
tist than most men of genius. Only now and then 

* Whether actually spoken, I do not know. 



DIVINE PRIDE. 263 

does lie refer to himself as a separate person from the 
reader, and then it is modestly, sometimes pathetically 
(e. g., "As I ebbed with the Ocean of Life." — Stanza 2, 
p. 202). " Every great character," Whitman observes 
(writing of Elias Hicks), is "adjusted strictly with 
reference to itself." (Pr., p. 472.) The great lesson 
of nature is poise, self-sufficiency, appropriation from 
without only of what can be subordinated to the life 
that makes us grow from within, and so, assimi- 
lated : — 

I will confront these shows of the day and night, 

I will know if I am to be less than they, 

I will see if I am not as majestic as they, 

I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they, 

I will see if I am to be less generous than they, 

I will see if I have no meaning, while the houses and ships have 

meaning, 
I will see if the fishes and birds are to be enough for themselves, 

and I am not to be enough for myself, (p. 275.) 

Unconscious contact with " serene moving ani- 
mals teaching content" and "the primal sanities of 
nature " (p. 244), is the reason that 

The secret of the making of the best persons, 
Is to grow in the open air, and to eat and sleep with the earth. 

-(p. 123.) 

On this account, his "Leaves of Grass" lies "un- 
born or dead" in libraries, (p. 98.) It is not so much 
that he refuses to "translate" himself, "except in the 
open air" (p. 75), but that the seclusion between the 
four walls makes for the ordinary reader any expansive 
"divine pride" difficult; and not merely in the case 
of architecture or music, but in that of every art 
whatsoever, in the last analysis, as he tells us : 



264 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

All ... is what you do to it when you look upon it. 

All ... is what awakes from you. ... (p. 173; cf. p. 282.)'* 

But he who contemplates the continence of vege- 
tables, birds, animals, can not but feel with Whit- 
man 

The consequent meanness of me should I skulk, or find myself 
indecent, while birds or animals never once skulk or find 
themselves indecent, (p. 91.) 

Elsewhere, again, in his grim way, he makes us 

laugh at the proud " Lord of Nature," so called : — 

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid 

and self-contained, 
I stand and look at them long and long. 
They do not sweat and whine about their condition. . . . 
Not one is respectable or happy over the whole earth, (p. 54.) 

Consequently — he continues the thought else- 
where, — 

I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood, 

I see that the elementary laws never apologize. 

I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house 

by, after all. (p. 45.) 
And I say to any man or woman, let your soul stand cool and 

composed before a million universes, (p. 76.) 

If ever Whitman is sublime, it is when he chants 
this self-centered " spiritual manhood poised " on 
itself, "giving, not taking law." (p. 167.) 

The joy of manly selfhood ! 

To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known 

or unknown, 
To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic, 
To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye, 
To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest, 



* For the open air, therefore, as a test of literary worth, cf. Pr. 
199 and 501, with p. 433 in " Leaves of Grass." 



DIVINE PRIDE. 265 

To confront with your personality all the other personalities of 
the earth, (p. 146.) 

O, while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, 

To meet life as a powerful conqueror, 

No fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms, 

To these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, prov- 
ing my soul impregnable, 

And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me. (p. 147.) 

O to be self-balanced for contingencies, 

To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, 
as the trees and animals do. (p. 16.) 

" Why should I pray ? "Why should I venerate 
and be ceremonious ? " asks Whitman, (p. 44.) Yet 
communion of the soul with God within is the very 
end and aim of life. None has framed a nobler prayer 
than that he has put into the mouth of Columbus. 
(p. 323). Nor does Whitman 'fail to follow the 
maxim of Rossetti in Soothsay : 

To God at best, to chance at worst, 
Give thanks for good things, last as first. 

He is always overflowing with gratitude and love. 
His prose is full of praise and thanksgiving and 
usually we feel that it goes — as " at best " it should — 
to God. (p. 398). 

But the real questions for the disturbed reader of 
Whitman to ask himself w^ould be, " what really is 
worship?" and " what is worship for?" The pur- 
pose of uttered worship is relief to the soul which can 
not any longer endure the pressure of pent adoration. 
It is to uplift the soul, not in any sense to confer a 
favor on its gocl. And the purpose of worship defines 
its true nature. Not the cries of " Lord, Lord " 
(Lk. vi, 46; Matt, vii, 21-23), but the doing of the 
will is the main ingredient, How idolatrous Ave are 



266 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

it is not easy for a mind unused to watching its own 
motions fully to realize. Have you rid yourself of 
"idols made with hands?" Well, so far, so good. 
Have you wholly rid yourself of idols made by the 
imagination ? If not, then you are worshiping dis- 
embodied idols, ghosts of idols. Is it so wise to 
decry idolatry, when perhaps you shall find one man 
only in a million really able to worship God in his un- 
represented Being ? Would not such worship be prac- 
tically atheistic for all but that extremely small num- 
ber who can understand that what most utterly eludes 
all thought is the most real ? 

To Whitman, of course, God is Subject of subject, 
Object of object. Behind yourself is God. Behind 
the universe is God. You and the universe are the 
two-fold veil of the One. True worship is worship of 
that One. Obedience to the Maker is being yourself. 
To be real is the best homage to Reality. If there is 
to be worship, it will be beyond words — or it will pass 
through one of the two symbols — (yourself and the 
universe) — or through both at one and the same time. 
Such verbal identification of the One with these is un- 
satisfactory. Yet, so long as the One Reality passes our 
thought, because thought invariably analyzes being 
into subject and predicate (as Plotinus long ago 
showed), we must not speak of It at all, or be con- 
tent to give It in terms of that which we expressly 
say It is not. Nor is such language improper. Even 
if we are to realize in " ecstacy" the nature of this 
" Reality," we shall have to pass beyond thought 
through some such inadequate self-contradictory 
thought of the Unthinkable. 

Whitman in his prefaces to Leaves of Grass for 



DIVINE PRIDE. 267 

1855 to 1872 and 1876 fully enough expounds his 
ideas on the subject of the poet and his office, and the 
aims of his own performance. To give a provisional 
body to the Spirit of religion until it be incarnate 
fully in men and women — readers of such poetry — is 
the highest duty of the poet. (Of. Pr. 272-279.) 

It was originally my intention, after chanting in " Leaves of 
Grass," the songs of the body and existence, to then compose a 
further equally needed volume, based on those convictions of per- 
petuity and conservation which, enveloping ail precedents, make 
the unseen soul govern absolutely at the last. I meant while in 
a sort continuing the theme of my first chants, to shift the slides 
and exhibit the problem and paradox of the same ardent and 
fully appointed personality entering the sphere of the resistless 
gravitation of spiritual law, and with cheerful face estimating 
death, not at all as the cessation, but as somehow what I feel it 
must be, the entrance upon by far the greatest part of existence, 
and something that life is at least as much for as it is for itself. 
But the full construction of such a work is beyond my powers, 
and must remain for some bard in the future. The physical and 
the sensuous, in themselves or their immediate continuations, retain holds 
upon me ivhich I think are never entirely released; and those holds T 
have not only not denied, but hardly 'wish to weaken. (Pr., p. 281; 
Cf. footnote, Pr., p. 284.) 

This paragraph I transcribe, because it ought to 
prevent us seeking in Whitman's work what he does 
not profess to furnish. The highest rapture which he 
conceives possible is denied him. Greater poets and 
prophets are to come than those that have been. In 
the domain of the very highest, he feels his unfitness 
for a sufficiently bold flight. 

Over the mountain growths — disease and sorrow, — 
An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering, 
High in the purer, happier air. 

From imperfection's murkiest cloud, 
Darts always forth one ray of perfect light, 
One flash of heaven's glory, (p. 182.) 



268 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

"A soul-sight of that divine clue" (Pr., p. 174) is 
vouchsafed him, " a guiding thread so fine along the 
mighty labyrinth." It is " belief in the plan " of God, 
"inclosed in time and space — health, peace, salvation 
universal." (p. 182.) You may retort : " This is vague." 
Nevertheless, Whitman may be right when he says: 
" The faintest indication is the indication of the best, — 
and then, becomes the clearest indication." (Pr., p. 267.) 

Is it a dream ? 

Nay, but the lack of it the dream, 

And failing it, life's lore and wealth a dream, 

And all the world a dream, (p. 183.) 

If, in the superb " Song of the Universal," he is 
breathless with the burden of the Spirit of God, in 
the allegory of "the Passage to India," which he ex- 
pressly declares to be a sort of last word (Pr., foot- 
note, p. 280), he makes his intentions clear enough : 

Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God, 

At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death, 

But that I, turning, call to thee, Soul, thou actual Me, 

And lo, thou gently masterest orbs, 

Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death, 

And fillest, swellest fall the vastnesses of Space, (p. 321.) 

If the strain is great, it is because there is no ef- 
fort to hide behind words or rites : 

Ah more than any priest O Soul, we too believe in God, 

But with the mystery of God we dare not dally. 

Bathe me, God, in thee, mounting to thee, 

I and my soul to range in range of Thee. (p. 321.) 

I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own. (p. 32.) 

Reckoning ahead O Soul, when thou, the time achieved, 

The seas all crossed, weathered the capes, the voyage done, 

Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aim attained, 

As, filled with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother found r 

The Younger melts in fondness in his arms. (p. 322.) 



worship. 269 

More definite utterance it was impossible for 
Whitman to give his thought. So long as there is 
consciousness of God as separate and distinct, com- 
munion is not entire; when it is entire, self merges 
with Self, the younger brother and the Elder Brother 
pass away, and the One alone is. 

3. WORSHIP. 

In the close of the magnificent poem just quoted 
from, Whitman describes the Absolute as the "you" 
of waters, woods, mountains, prairies, clouds, suns 
and stars. Idolatry is always the refuge of wing- 
weary aspirants. 

My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain, 
The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms, 
The great Comerado, the lover true for whom I pine, will be 
there, (p. 73.) 

Then why strive to anticipate ? Visions of Him 
would be premature, and, maybe, if over-distinct, in- 
jurious to progress in the Soul's consolidation for an 
eternal identity aware of itself in God. Let symbols 
suffice for the present! His "Gods" are various 
names of the One. (p. 213.) The divine Lover, the 
Ideal Man, Death, the Best Idea, historic heroisms, 
Time, Space, the Earth, the Sun, the Stars. But of 
such Gods, or symbols of God, there is none " more 
divine than yourself." (p. 299.) None more than 
the " other gods, these men and women I love." (p. 
375.) Besides, it is clear, no symbol is so significant 
as one's own being if " nothing is greater to one than 
one's self is" (p. 76), particularly if the thought of 
God as other than the Reality of you, is the thought 
of something beyond knowledge and intuition. "The 



270 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

unseen is proved by the seen" (p. 31), and the body is 
symbol of the soul. It is so much of the soul as we 
perceive through the senses. Therefore, if you per- 
sist in asking what he worships, he answers : 

If I worship one thing more than another, it shall be the spread of 
my own body ; (p. 49.) 

and he will not shrink from a complete delight in 

it — that most eloquent word, if " things " be indeed as 

Whitman conceives, " words of God." (Cf. p. 176.) 

I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious, 
Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy. (p. 49.) 

Nor is this worship of the body so alien to his main 
purpose as it might seem. It is not mere defiance. 
If true worship of the Divine is to make the self 
realize its dignity as that which proceeds from It, ex- 
presses It, goes to It ; and if the body is for us, most 
of the time, the hieroglyph for self and soul; it is of 
paramount importance to realize the greatness, the 
beauty, the sacred nature of the body. " Temple of the 
Holy Ghost " we have been taught to call it, but 
thanks to a strange eclipse of much of its glory by con- 
ventional clothes, we shrink unconsciously from repre- 
senting ourselves the whole, sound, perfectly developed 
body as athrill with God. Yet, " If any thing is 
sacred, the human body is sacred." (p. 86.) And 
Whitman means to rescue for himself his entire 
body from any indignities placed upon it in .ages of 
ignorance or impiety. " The expression of a well 
made man appears not only in his face." (p. 81.) 
"In any man or woman, a clean, strong, firm-fibered 
body is more beautiful than the most beautiful face." 
(p. 86.) 

Who will venture to praise the folds of drapery 



worship. 271 

as more graceful and modest than the play of muscle 
and sinew? ISTot alone the marbles of ancient Greece 
shall have the right to a glorious nudity. In his 
Prose we are supplied with a complete commentary 
on this, to many adverse critics, the most objectionable 
part of Whitman's work. 

Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! — ah. if poor, sick, 
purient humanity in cities might really know you once more ! Is 
not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your 
thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability, that is 
indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not 
-only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent, (p. 104.) 

An entire essay in his Collect is devoted to this 
subject and makes his position at all events quite in- 
telligible. (Pr., p. 302-306.) " To the pure all things," 
of course, " are pure," and when God made man he 
ventured to think his work all "very good." The 
poet surely has a right to adopt God's point of view, 
.and if he does not, who shall? 

I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall 

be complete, 
The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who 

remains jagged and broken, (p. 179.) 
Old as the world is and beyond statement as are the countless 
and splendid results of its culture and evolution, perhaps the 
best, and earliest, and purest intuitions of the human race have 
yet to be developed. (Pr. p. 306.) 

These rudimentary convictions it is the poet's 
special business to bring into full consciousness. The 
bird is not only singing for his mate, but also for the 
eggs she covers with ruffled feathers, (p. 24.) One of 
those rudimentary convictions is the sacredness of the 
unadorned body. Still why, 

".If I worship one thing more than another" 



272 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

must it be the body? Because it is the one thing 
that is really mine, the worship of which exalts me, 
and implies a worship still more devout of that which 
can not be called a "thing," namely, " Me," who 
dwell in it. 

But there are doubtless some who do not yet un- 
derstand. They will urge: " Is there no greater body 
than your body? Is there no greater soul than your 
soul ? Why not prefer to worship an Apollo Belve- 
dere? Why not bow, if bow you must, to the soul of 
Plato ? Surely here are more adequate symbols — 
better idols !" Whitman would answer : 

After all these are only to me ideas. If that 
which these ideas connote be greater in fact to an- 
other impartial person than my body and my soul, 
which are to him also mere ideas, they are not so to 
me. For him they are comparable. For me they are 
not. My body is something more to me than the 
best idea of a body. My soul is something more to 
me than the loftiest notion I can form of a soul. 
Even could I institute a comparison and realize the 
superiority, I should not on that account necessarily 
prefer Apollo and Plato as symbols of the Divine. 
"The seed perfection " nestles safely inclosed in every 
being (p. 181;, and after all "size is only develop- 
ment." (p. 45.) "Any thing is but a part." (p. 73.) 
Only the whole is really divine. Each thing in its 
place is equally fit as symbol of that whole. 
I do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something 

else. (p. 38.) 
I do not call one greater and one smaller, 
That which fills its period and place is equal to any. (p. 71.) 
Each of us inevitable, 



worship. 273 

Each of us limitless — each of us with his or her right upon the 

earth. 
Each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth, 
Each of us here as divinely as any is here. (p. 119.) 

After all. when we look out upon the world, it is 
a fact that all lines converge to the eye. You may 
deplore this if you choose. You may argue from the 
fact that others perceive the same phenomenon, that 
it is an evident illusion. Yet, as long as you wish to 
paint this world, you will have to accept this optic 
egotism as a fundamental fact of our world. Else 
what you paint will be untrue to the only experience 
we have of the landscape. 

Have you thought there could be but a single supreme? 

There can be any number of supremes — one does not countervail 

another any more than one eyesight countervails another, or 

one life countervails another. 
All is eligible to all, 
All is for individuals, all is for you, 
Xo condition is prohibited, not God's or any. 
All comes by the body, only health puts one rapport with the 

universe, (p. 264.) 

If this egotism be charged against us as crime, we 
can but say : 

The universe is dulylin order; every thing is in its place. 

-(p. 331.) 
and clearly. 

I stand in my place with my own clay here. (p. 20.) 

If the past and its names interests me, how much 
more would this my present and I interest the men 
of old ? 

I sat studying at the feet of the great masters. 

Xow, if eligible, that the great masters might return and study 

me. (p. 20.) 



274 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

I know that the past was great and the future will be great, 
And I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time. 

-(p. 193.) 

As the corpse was fittest for its clays, the heir is 
fittest now for his. (p. 266.) Let me " exalt the present 
and the real." (p. 162.) 

Immense have been the preparations for me . . . 
All forces have been steadily employed to complete and de- 
light me. 
Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul. (p. 72.) 

In literature, we may have supposed we could 
avoid this egocentric perspective. Thought we fancied 
is impersonal. But only the infinite circle has no 
center — or has its center every-where, which amounts 
to the same — and the mind can not inclose the in- 
finite. It can " drown itself" in such a thought as 
Leopardi so well put it. If the soul is to realize its 
thought, set its affections upon it, make of the idea 
an ideal, the radius must be finite, and then, of course, 
every thing once more groups itself about you. As 
Whitman expressed it, " even for the treatment of 
the universal, in politics, metaphysics, or an\ r thing, 
sooner or later we come down to one single, solitary 
soul." (Pr., p. 229.) To give full expression to this 
truth was the " Song of Myself" written. 

Where I am . . . there is the center of all, there is the mean- 
ing of all. (p. 193.) 

The true nature of things I do not penetrate. 
Nothing is transparent. 

We fathom you not, we love you. . . . 

You furnish your parts toward the soul. (p. 134.) 

Things are "only inaudable words." (p. 176.) 
They "express me better than I can express myself." 



worship. 275 

(p. 122.) The whole world-show is bat " myself disin- 
tegrated " (p. 129) ; a spectrum, analysis, so to speak, 
of my soul. If I wish to contemplate myself, T must 
" absorb all " the sights of the cities " to myself." 
(p. 38.) They 

Tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them, 
And such as it is to be of these more or less I am, 
And of these one and all I weave the song of myself. 

" -(P- 41.) 
All the " shows of Day and Night," " I absorb all 
in myself, and become master myself." (p. 275.) All 
history " tastes good and becomes mine." (p. 59.) 
Even the civil war of the early sixties serves me best 
by illustrating the "vehement struggle . . . for 
unity in one's self." (p. 373.) 

Apart from my view of them, " solid things " only 
" stand for realities." In that sense, too, they are 
words — not merely mirrors of myself. 

Have you ever reckoned that the landscape took substance and 
form that it might be painted in a picture ? (p. 172.) 

Things, however, while not transparent, are at 

least dimly translucent, and the Real, that filters 

through them, if it be the same Real that shines 

through me, I may well call it by the same name. I 

have then a right — a reasonable right — to identify 

myself with things, not merely with my sensations 

and notions of them, but with what they are. 

Underneath all to me is myself, to you yourself, (p. 274.) 
One's self must never give way — that is the final substance that 

out of all is sure. . . . 
When shows break up, what but One's Self is sure ? (p. 342.) 

The proper use of things, then, to which the poet 

(and according to Whitman he is every man) is bound 



276 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

to be " faithful " (p. 271) is to " enter by them to an 
area" fit for the self's " dwelling " (p. 47), " taking all 
hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them." 
(p. 197.) For the business of the soul is growth — 
growth from within. My business is but to " ex- 
tricate " myself out of myself, (p. 351.) 

My real self has yet to come forth, 

It shall yet march forth o'ermastering, till all lies beneath me, 

It shall yet stand up the soldier of ultimate victory, (p. 364.) 

If for this I need the outer world of symbol why 
expend energy on seeking the rare and extraordinary ? 

You surely come back at last, 
In things best known to you finding the best. (p. 175.) 

Because after all 

What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me, 
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns, 
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me, 
Not asking the sky to come down to my good will, 
Scattering it freely, forever, (p. 39.) 

Rare and extraordinary things indeed might over- 
awe me, I might forget that I was really master. In 
the magnitude and novelty of my experience, per- 
haps, some rival to my soul would lurk. My ideal is 
not Nelson, then, or Socrates, or Newton, or any 
greater name of saint or god, but myself, endow r ed 
with their perfections. Let us openly avow this to 
our souls ; repeat it again and again till we are in no 
danger of deceiving ourselves at any time on this 
subject. Let us not pretend to see otherwise than our 
eyes permit. Let us wait to speak impersonally till 
we have passed to a higher plane of consciousness, 
that shall be impersonal. Let us boldly paint all our 
ideal pictures with the lines converging with " refer- 
ence to the soul " (p. 351) for me, mine, for you, yours. 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 277 

Such is the substance of Whitman's teaching. Not 
only is all knowledge of ours subjective, but (clear to 
the eye of faith) the real Object is identical with the 
real Subject, so that the terms " I" and " It," " One's 
Self" and " God" are convertible. 

4. THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 

It becomes incumbent on us now to investigate 
the practical corollaries of the propositions philosophic 
and theological which we have hitherto considered. 

It is with some hesitation indeed that I approach 
this part of my exposition, as it will be far less easy 
than elsewhere to make Walt. Whitman speak for 
himself, and in speaking for him there is liable to 
enter a hardly calculable personal factor. All the 
guidance we have is in the hypothesis that his own 
unexpressed view reconciled all his self-contradictions 
and paradoxes. For is there not in the very tone of 
the already quoted lines, " Very well, then, I con- 
tradict myself," something which might suggest rather 
a concession for argument's sake than an actual plea 
of guilty to any charge of reckless inconsistency? If" 
evil is declared at one time non-existent, at another 
time part of the Divine, evil must bear two senses, or 
we should have to conclude that the Divine itself is 
non-existent. The tangle is by no means easy for the 
reader of Whitman to ravel. But the critic is obliged 
to attempt this. We might, perhaps, out of sheer 
despair, have set the whole matter of morality aside, 
as we do with Keats' poetry, were it not that Whit- 
man so clearly in his prose arrogates for himself a 
moral purpose, lie tells us that "all great art must 
have an ethic purpose." (Pr., p. 188.) To be sure, 



278 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

he warns us in his preface of 1885 that "the greatest 
poet does not moralize or make applications of morals, 
he knows the soul." (Pr., p. 267.) But as long as 
Religion and Ethics are inseparable (works being the 
fruit of a living flower of faith), and that he boldly 
claims to " inaugurate a religion," one can not evade 
the question altogether. It is interesting also to note 
by the way Whitman's criticism of J. F. Millet's 
picture, which may have suggested to Mr. Havelock 
Ellis his helpful comparison of Whitman and Millet.* 

Besides this masterpiece ("The First Sower ") there were many 
others, (I shall never forget the simple evening scene, " Watering 
the Cow,"), all inimitable, all perfect as pictures, works of mere 
art ; and then it seemed to me, with that last impalpable ethic pur- 
pose from the artist (most likely unconscious to himself) 'which I 
am always looking for. (Pr., p. 181.) 

But that Whitman was not indifferent as to the 
moral effect of his work, is put beyond all dispute by 
the note to his Preface of 1876, a paragraph of which 
shall be quoted : 

£>ince I have been ill (1873-74-75), mostly without serious 
pain, and with plenty of time and frequent inclination to judge 
my poems (never composed with an eye on the book market, nor 
for fame, nor for any pecuniary profit), I have felt temporary de- 
pression more than once, for fear that in "Leaves of Grass" the 
moral parts were not sufficiently pronounced. But in my clearest 
and calmest moods I have realized that as those " Leaves," all 
and several, surely prepare a way for and necessitate morals, and 
are adjusted to them, just the same as nature does and is, they 
are what, consistently with my plan they must and probably 
should be. (In a certain sense, while the Moral is the purport 
and last intelligence of all Nature, there is absolutely nothing of 
the moral in the works, or laws, or shows of Nature. Those only 
lead inevitably to it— begin and necessitate it.) (Pr., p. 284.) 

* The New Spirit, by Havelock Ellis. Walter Scott. London,. 
pages 104-107, a very suggestive little volume of essays. 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 279 

According to Whitman's own judgment, it will 
be impossible to extract a little treatise on morals, 
and difficult to obtain a systematic solution of the 
problem of evil, from his poems. 

There are those who nowadays venture to claim 
that without evil there can be for man no good. 
Therefore, as they would perpetuate the consciously 
moral in man, they find themselves obliged to con- 
template an eternity of evil, at least of a subjective 
sort. There must always remain in the mind, even 
should it pass out of the being, that which is different 
from good, if there is to be consciousness of good! 
There must always remain in the world of experience 
the painful, obstructive, and dangerous, in order that 
there may be opportunity for the display of will ! 
To this view Whitman does not seem to accord much 
sympathy. I suppose he would have argued that it 
was, in the first place, not at all necessary that we 
should remain consciously moral. 

I give nothing as duties, 

What others give as duties, I give as living impulses, 

(Shall I give the heart's action as a duty ?) (p. 190.) 

If the figure is to be taken strictly, he would 
rather have morality relegated to the subconscious 
sphere of life. Perfect health involves oblivion of the 
body as a functioning organism. The soul, when 
complete in ideal efficiency, knows of no obligation, 
the " ought " having become the " is." For any thing 
that looks like dualism, we have a sharp reproof. It 
is puerile, and absurd : — 

Silent and amazed even when a little boy, 

I remember I heard the preacher every Sunday put God in his 
statements 



280 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

As contending against some being or influence, (p. 217.)* 
He sets down his disagreement with such views 
as I have occasionally heard ascribed to him by appa- 
rently conscientious readers of "Leaves of Grass," 
and which have been stated above. 

Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is 
good steadily hastening toward immortality, 

And the vast all that is called Evil I saw hastening to merge 
itself and become lost and dead. (p. 216.) 
Only the good is universal, (p. 181.) 

Whitman summarizes with evident approval 
what he believes to be the views of Hegel on this 
iect : — 



The specious, the unjust, the cruel, and what is called the 
unnatural, though not only permitted in a certain sense (like 
shade to light), inevitable in the divine scheme, are by the whole 
constitution of that scheme, partial, inconsistent, temporary, and 
though having ever so great an ostensible majority, are certainly 
destined to failure, after causing much suffering. (Pr., p. 176.) 

To mere "optimism," explaining "only the sur- 
face and fringe" (Pr., p. 174), he has no leaning. He 
desires always to see things as they really seem to the 
eye. The " divine cue," of which he claims a " soul 
sight," is the thought that " the whole congeries of 
things" is " like a leashed dog in the hand of the 
hunter" (Pr., p. 174) ; "that there is central and never 
broken unity " and one " consistent and eternal pur- 
pose." (Pr., p. 176.) The notion that there is any 
thing inherently evil or foul in the universe seems 
to him "to impugn Creation" (Pr., p. 306), G-od 
"seeing no evil" in it. {Cf. Hab. i, 13.) When he 
tells us that 



* Cf. Pr., p. 270. 



THE PROBLEM OP EVIL. , 281 

The difference between sin and goodness is no delusion, (p. 335.) 
he must doubtless have in mind a conception some- 
what akin to this of Browning : 

The evil is null, is naught, is silence, implying sound; 
What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more. 

— (Abt. Vogeler. St. IX, 1. 6.) 

Growth from good to better is quite sufficient to al- 
low of the full exercise of the will. Evil thus be- 
comes merely the name of a good that has been 
transcended. 

The soul is always beautiful, it appears more or it appears less, 

it comes or it lags behind, (p. 331.) 
Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad. 

-(p. 269.) 
The universe is duly in order, every thing is in its place, (p. 331.) 

By this is meant, then, that, while in the universe 
absolute law and order obtains, and the whole there- 
fore is good, yet the individual can occupy divers 
places in this whole, and if it prefer to occupy a 
lower one than it might occupy, embodied as it now 
is, it is bad with reference to its possibilities — it has 
yet to grow. 

The fundamental difficulty about this evolution- 
ary conception of " Evil " as propounded by some 
oriental theosophies would seem to lie in the postula- 
tion of a universe infinite and perfect, giving their 
strict sense to these words infinite and perfect. To 
speak of progress with reference to a whole, felt to be 
thus infinite and perfect, is sufficiently meaningless. 
And if the whole can not be conceived as growing, be- 
cause already all that it can be, and yet each portion of 
it grows, we are confronted with a serious problem in- 
deed. One solution immediately offers itself, which, 
while it would serve to account for our experiences 



282 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

of incorrigible wrong-doing,* is hardly satisfactory to 
our moral or aesthetic sense, namely: — that retrogres- 
sion in some exactly balances progression in others,. 
so that the whole remains in stable equilibrium per- 
petually self-identical. But the thought of such a 
universe is a horrible purposeless swirl and monstrous 
unrest, sickening the soul with the very prospect of its 
own imperishable existence. And then to tell us, by way 
of consolation, as some would, that such is the uni- 
verse, to be sure, but that an escape is provided for any 
soul out of this fiery " wheel of Nature" f upon definite 
conditions into what is to us now as yet non-being; and 
that though souls are thus constantly passing out, — be- 
coming "extinct," indeed, so far as such poor living as 
this can be dignified by the name of life, — neverthe- 
less the number that keep up the universal swirl of 
being, never suffers diminution on that account, be- 
cause originally infinite; surely this were only to pile 
paradox on paradox, to answer a question by a 
harder question, to satisfy the spiritual cravings of 
man at the expense of accurate thinking. 

Perhaps it would be better to recognize that 
thought can not deal with what has avowedly no lim- 
its. The zero and the infinite when they enter our 
premises vitiate our logic hopelessly, and no conclu- 
sion has cogency. Wherefore, if with human faculties 
even a picturesque solution of the mystery of existence 



*Cf. Couds without water, carried along by winds; autumn 
trees without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; wild 
waves of the sea, foaming out their own shames ; wandering 
stars, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. 
(St. Jude xii, 13.) 

tSt. Jas., iii, 6. 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 283 

is to be legitimately obtained, one which will afford 
the mind a rational repose, it would be well not to 
render at the very start all thought impossible by the 
quite gratuitous assumption that we are dealing with 
a literary "infinite" and therefore "perfect" or "fin- 
ished" universe. 

Now, it would scarcely be fair to Whitman to im- 
pute to him such views. It suffices him to assert 
that the universe is as it should be, and is good ; that 
it is adapted to the best advantages of us human 
souls and our less advanced fellows in animal, vege- 
table and crystal. The universe baffles our intel- 
lectual, moral, and aesthetic faculties of judgment. 
Therefore we say it is infiuite, meaning that its lim- 
its are for us uncliscoverable; that it is perfect, mean- 
ing that the intensity of its goodness and beauty are 
beyond our sense to endure. He has no cast-iron 
theory of the Cosmos. He regards even the seas and 
wind as " too big for formal handling" (Pr., p. 95), 
and therefore as improper subjects for the poet. The 
"common soil" itself (Pr., p. 100) escapes artistic 
grasp. All one can do in attempting a " pen and 
ink" sketch of it, is to enumerate various sensuous 
appeals it makes, several phases of its appearance. 
On this account the " demesne of poetry will always 
be not the exterior but the interior;" not the ma- 
crocosm but the microcosm." (Pr., p. 298.) He 
" leaves all free " (p. 190), and charges his disciples to 
do the same. 

I resist any thing better than nay own diversity, 
Breathe the air, but leave plenty after me. (p. 42.) 

So far as he can see, " Evolution " will explain 

everv thing. He does not feel himself bound to 



284 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

reckon over closely with what is beyond his sight, 
with possible "infinites " and " eternities " of an ab- 
solute sort. He enjoys Hegel's glorious philosophic 
tour-de-force, but he would be the last to pin his faith 
to Hegel. He insists on " leaving room ahead of him- 
self" (Pr., p. 266), and of us, on what he calls u keep- 
ing vista." (p. 268.) Hegel after all is no more than 
an "indispensable" contributor to the "erudition of 
America's future," but hardly worth so much as the 
messages of the old " spiritual poets and poetry of 
other lands." (Pr., p. 177.) " Encompass worlds, 
but never try to encompass me" (p. 50), would be his 
defiant reply to urgent invitations of any officious 
spider of a Metaphysician to come into his gluey net 
of a parlor, besplangled though it were with the dews 
of the morning all asparkle in the sun. 

But it will save space if I set forth dogmatically, 
at the risk of a little repetition, what seems to be the 
solution of the moral tangle in Whitman's poetry. 
Dogmatism is always a capital yoke-fellow to doubt; 
it is usually prudent to make up in positiveness for 
any lack of definite knowledge, as is the custom with 
not a few ! 

The word Evil is used by Whitman with five dis- 
tinct meanings : 

(1) Evil may mean the less good as compared to 
the good, the good as compared to better, the better 
as compared to best. In this sense " evil " is really 
"good; " different in degree only, not in kind. 

(2) Evil may mean a supposed not-good ; as such 

its existence is denied. 

Omnes! Omnes ! Let others ignore what they may, 

I make the poem of evil also, I commemorate that part also, 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 285 

I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is — and I 

say there is in fact no evil, 
(Or if there is, I say it is just as important to you, to the land or 

to me, as any thing else. (p. 22.) 

In this passage we clearly see the first two mean- 
ings presented together. 

(3) Evil may mean failure to develop according 
to the " inner light" (Pr., p. 465), the " spiritual divine 
faculty " (Pr., p. 284), "'the inward Deity-planted law " 
(Pr., p. 465), because of an inadequate realization of 
one's destiny. 

On this account, Whitman feels he has con- 
tributed a " new religion," and makes the start with 
the " divine pride" in one's self. 

None has ever yet adored and worshiped half enough. 
None has begun to think how divine he himself is and how* cer- 
tain the future, (p. 22.) 

Here he strengthens the soul by a recognition of 
absolute law, to which there are no exceptions. He 
ridicules '-miracles" in that sense. Privileges, too, 
he will have for none. (p. 48.) Therefore, there can 
be, of course, no substitutional atonements, no forgive- 
ness. Remorseless law, expiation, and conversion in 
the strict sense of " turning about," and repentance in 
the sense of doing better, are with him the great 
pivotal words of ethics.* 

A careful study of his conception of " sceptic " or 
"infidel" seems to give the word the sense of "a 
man who does not believe in man (cf., p. 217), and 
consequently not in his own better self; a man who 
opposes the champion of liberty, political, social, per- 



* These points will be substantiated by quotation later on in 
this paper. 



286 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

sonal, who "supposes be triumphs" over principles 
and causes by crushing those who maintain and 
espouse them,* when in truth he is crushing himself 
in them. If a man can not love God unless he love 
man whom he hath seen, is it not equally true that 
unless a man believe in men, he never can believe in 
God? ~No man who believes in man is an infidel, 
however much he may think himself one. His em- 
phatic denials are but perverse affirmations. 

In such a wondrous world as this, goodness and 
faith in self can not seem strange : 

Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear, it would not 

amaze me. (p. 123.) 
The wonder is always and alwa} r s, how there can be a mean man 

or an infidel, (p. 47.) 

It is Whitman's special mission to "confound" 
wholly the " skeptic " "with the hush of his lips." (p. 
50.) And surely no poet has held up to the man who 
has disbelieved in himself a more terrible "hand- 
mirror " than he. He shows the " infidel " (i. <?., the un- 
believer in Whitman's religion) that he has become a 
slave — that his body publishes it abroad — and he cries 
out in a sympathetic despair for the man : 

Such a result so soon, and from such a beginning! (p. 213.) 

(4) But evil may not mean failure to develop 
courageously from within, though such " evil" is the 
only evil there can be that is deplorable- 

The true poet is " master of obedience." (p. 273, 
Of. Pr., p. 264.) The states must "obey little" and 
"resist much." (p. 15.) Men and women are to 



* Cf. " But for all this liberty, has not some out of place nor 
the infidel entered into full possession." (p. 287.) 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 287 

■" think lightly of the laws" as such. (p. 152.) Whit- 
man goes so far as to " beat the gong of revolt." (p. 
48.) His words are "reminders" of "life," "free- 
dom," "extrication." (p. 48.) He is "really" 
" neither for nor against institutions " (p. 107), but 
lie is for the soul. ^Tow, if the soul did not refuse to 
be shaped from without, it could never develop from 
within. Rebellion against conventions, laws, de- 
corums, any exterior efforts to reform or improve, 
must be. It is perfectly clear that if the " Holy 
Spirit" (interior Energy) is to work according to its 
own vital individual methods in the world of uni- 
versal Law (of the "Father"), there needs to be in 
man " Satan," which is revolt not against the true 
"Father" from whom the "Holy Spirit" derives 
(who dictates to the individual his true development 
in perfect harmony with his world), but against a false 
" Law r " of outside imposition ; against also that very 
^'Father" misconceived as external to the soul, for 

The soul has that measureless pride which revolts from every 
lesson but its own. (p. 291.) 

The Savior the "mightier God" (p. 339), the 
"beautiful, gentle God " (p. 58), the " beautiful God 
the Christ" (p. 113), is he who manifested as sym- 
pathy and love, makes men aware of God the Holy 
•Ghost,* and so may be said to " send " Him to them, 
who in his turn enlightening them " leads into all 
truth," so that "Satan" "falls from heaven," being 
no longer a god (i. e., a good) to man, as man be- 

* Is the " Holy Ghost " or " Inner Light" to be considered 
synonymous with " Conscience ? " [Cf. Pr., pp. 284, 465.) 



288 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

comes " one with the Father " through the "media- 
tion of the Son." 

Such would seem to be the meaning of the 
"Square Deiric" (p. 339), which for years refused to 
yield up its secret, because I was unable to see that 
with Whitman the " quaternary " that takes the place 
of the orthodox Christian Trinity represents in its 
manifoldness a process, not a being. The true God is 
not many, but One. When known as One Being, he 
is known as Self, and all differences and distinctions 
in the Deity necessarily efface themselves in rapturous 
ecstasy. If this doctrine, novel and strange, be a first 
installment of the new theology (Pr., p. 278), the more 
splendid theology (Pr., p. 286) which according to Whit- 
man is fast coming, there are those who will feel 
somewhat alarmed. But, for their comfort, let me 
state that Whitman claims no infallible popes, coun- 
cils, or churches for his dogma. He thinks the " New 
Theology" will not be "settled" quite "in a year 
nor even a century ! " (Pr., p. 286.) 

In the sense, then, of " Satan," evil is provision- 
ally good. It is energy turned outward in self-defense, 
instead of being engaged at its normal work of build- 
ing up the organism.* 

(5) Evil may finally mean pain, defeat, age, death, 
the so-called ills which "flesh is heir to." 

In this sense, Whitman denies that evil is to be 
deplored. Quotations might easily be multiplied in- 
definitely. "The soul forever and forever" (p. 21), 
and it would seem the soul is never more distinctly 



* Compare with the " Chanting the Square Deific " the 
Rounded Catalogue Divine Complete." (p. 419.) 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 289 

self-conscious as master, than when it is confronted by 
a hostile environment. The whole of heroism and 
greatness is this attitude of defiance and denial. From 
the " Song of Joys," these lines are to the point : 

O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted ! 
To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand! 
To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face' to face ! 
To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with 

perfect nonchalance ! 
To be indeed a God ! (p. 148.) 

Defeat is as glorious as victory. The true guage of 
success is soul-growth. 

"Battles are lost in the same spirit in which 
they are won." (p. 43.) All " overcome heroes " are 
to be cheered : 

Did we think victory great? 

So it is— but now it seems to me, when it can not be helped, that 

defeat is great, 
And that death and dismay are great, (p. 288.) 

Old age is met with the same spirit : 

Sublime old age of manhood or womanhood, 
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the 

universe, 
Old age, flowing free with the delicious nearby freedom of death. 

-(p. 126.) 
the old manhood of me, my noblest joy of all ! 
My children and grandchildren, my white hair and beard, 
My largeness, calmness, majesty out of the long stretch of my 

life. (p. 145.) 
Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young, 
The young are beautiful— but the old are more beautiful than the 

young, (p. 217.) 

~No poet has sung old age more sublimely; his own in 
the gem entitled " Halcyon Days " (p. 388) ; old age 
and youth contrasted in " Youth, Day, Old Age and 
Night " (p. 180) ; the old man in st. 3. of " I sing the 



290 MODERN PROPHET POETS. 

body Electric." (p. 82.) " The ideal woman ; prac- 
tical, spiritual," in "As at thy portals also death " (p. 
376) : st. 11 of " Song of the Broad Axe " (p. 157) ; in 
the surpassingly beautiful st. 5 of " From Noon to 
Starry Night." (p. 355.) Death the "great sea" to 
which old age is the enlarging " estuary " " grandly 
spreading itself" is glorified, (p. 218.) 

It may be that Walt. Whitman has not treated 
this theme adequately. Certainly he has treated it as 
no one before him. There is nothing of Leopardi's 
courting of death because life is evil. It is just be- 
cause life is good that he is led to believe " death " — 
the unknown life — still better. It is "just as lucky 
to die "as "to be bom." (p. 34.) "What will be 
will be well, for what is is well." (p. 335.) Of death 
as immortality it is not yet time for us to treat. 

If now pain, defeat, age, death, turn out to be no 
evils at all, what, then, is evil ? Let us summarize the 
last few paragraphs : 

Evil (1) = the less good: — essentially good; only relatively speak- 
ing not good. 

(2) = the not good :— non-existent. 

(3) = failure to develop from within :— the lack of good. 

(4) = revolt against external laws:— a temporary good. 

(5) = pain, defeat, old age, death: — opportunities for good, 

all good. 

Of these, then, the only evil to be feared is the third, 
and that is the want of good, deficiency, failure to de- 
velop latent possibilities, sloth of soul ; all which is 
not something self-existent, eternally opposed to good. 

5. SALVATION AND THE SAVIOR. 

The quality of Being in the object's self, according to its own 
central idea and purpose, and of growing therefrom and thereto — 



SALVATION AND THE SAVIOR. 291 

not criticism by other standards and adjustments thereto — is the 
lesson of Nature. (Pr., p. 230.) 

It is in this thought of evolution from within, 
of the vital guide at the heart, all else with reference 
to the individual thing tending to assist in its self- 
fulfillment, that Whitman finds his moral principle. 

The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one 
single individual — namely to You. (p. 273.) 

All parts away for the progress of souls, (p. 127.) 

Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indiffer- 
ent, (p. 46.) 

I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait. (p. 32.) 

The soul is . . . real, 

No reasoning, no proof has established it, 

Undeniable growth has established it. (p. 180.) 

So far as we can see, growth is for growth's 
sake, — for growth is but " being " — nor can we push 
forward to a farther conception. 

Have the past struggles succeeded ? . . . 

Now understand me well — it is provided in the essence of things 
that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall 
come forth something to make a greater struggle necessar}'. 

—(p. 128.) 
I said to my spirit : " When we become the enfolders of those orbs 
and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, 
shall we be filled and satisfied then ?" 
And my spirit said: "No; we but level that lift, to pass and 
continue beyond." (p. 74.) 
The law of promotion and transformation can not be eluded. 

-(p. 336.) 
If you want a substantial conception rather than 
the formal one of "growth," he will suggest as syno- 
nym " eternal life." Does that need emotive qualifi- 
cation? If so, he can afford to give it the familiar 
name "happiness." (p. 78.) For to him, "the efflux 
of the soul is happiness." (p. 124.) The drift of 



292 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

things is indefinable — "it is grand" and "it is happi- 
ness." (p. 171.) The "core of life" is "happiness." 
(p. 300.) Hence, a man needs to wait for no one and 
no thing to be complete. To be is to grow. To grow 
is eternal life. Eternal life is happiness. 

All triumphs and glories are complete in themselves, to lead 
onward, (p. 373.) 

No stopping place is thought of — the end being 
beyond thought. Our last thought is progress beyond 
thought. From this we can readily make clear to our- 
selves why Walt Whitman is so strong in his rejec- 
tion of asceticism. Every natural function is pure 
and good. There is no merit in mutilation. The 
body and its needs are to be reverenced : 

I believe in the flesh and the appetites, (p. 49.) 

He is ambitious in his writings to 

permit to speak at every hazard 
Nature without check, with original energy, (p. 29.) 

It is not too much life we have, but too little. 
Asceticism were the proper theory if any part of us 
could under an}^ circumstances be overdeveloped. 
What seems overdevelopment of one, is really under- 
development of some other, organ or function. What 
we need, then, is not repression, but right stimulation. 

Not that Whitman utterly despises ascetic good- 
ness.* It is good, no doubt, but simply not the best. 
It is, at all events, narrow, unbeautiful. It has its use 
as the method for exemplifying singly, certain par- 
ticular perfections. But the object of nature is the 
man entire, characterized, like the poetry of the Bible, 
by " immense sensuousness immensely spiritual." (Pr. 



* Note his appreciation of Whittier. (Pr., pp. 181 and 481 .] 



SALVATION AND THE SAVIOR. 293 

p. 380.) In complete accord with Obermaim, he thinks 
this result will he attained by remembering " that our 
best dependence is to be upon humanity itself, and its 
own inherent, normal, full-grown qualities, without 
any superstitious support whatever." (Pr., p. 214.) 

How such a result is to be attained in particular 
cases, we are left to infer for ourselves. We have 
seen he recognizes a " universal will " — the destiny of 
any and every individual to be perfect. That "will" 
is, of course, " abysmic," and enters consciousness as 
the "conscience/' The objects of conscience are 
seized upon with an enthusiasm which, fortified by a 
cosmic philosophy of indefinite development for the 
individual, is a Religion. But, so far as we can tell, 
Religion subserves a still higher end. 

Even in religious fervor there is a touch of animal heat. But 
moral conscientiousness, crystalline, without flaw, not Godlike 
only, entirely human, awes and enchants forever. Great is emo- 
tional love, even in the order of the rational universe. But, if we 
must make gradations, I am clear there is something greater. 
(Pr.. p. 248.) 

How this object is to be attained — that is, how 

this religions fervor is to be kindled, and to be in due 

time transmuted into "something greater"* is made 

fairly evident. Of course, you can not probe, preach, 

and persecute any more. If you did, you would only 

arouse "Satan" in a man. 

Underneath Christ the Divine I see, 

The dear love of man for his comrade, (p. 102.) 

Comerado I give you my hand, 

I give you my love more precious than money, 

I give myself before preaching or law, 

Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me? 

-(p. 129.) 



Emerson's " Celestial Love 



294 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

An invitation of this sort can be accepted by the 
proudest soul. 

Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, 
AVhen I give, I give myself, (p. 66.) 
Whoever walks a furlong without sympathy, walks to his own 
funeral drest in his shroud, (p. 76.) 

And with Whitman this is not mere highsound- 

ing hyperbole. Lack of sympathy argues that you 

have fallen from a consciousness of that Self, which is- 

also your neighbor's. 

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become 

the wounded person. 
My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe. 

—(p. 60.) 

If he finds you depressed he will infuse in you 

The joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human- 
soul is capable of generating and emitting in steady and 
limitless floods, (p. 143.) 

He knows his own incompleteness. It is relatively 
just as great as that of the lowest men. 

I feel I am of them — I belong to those convicts and prostitutes 
myself, 

And henceforth I will not deny them — for how can I deny my- 
self? (p. 299.) 

Does he meet them, his eye, his gesture, his- 

mouth will reassure them : 

Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you. 

Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you, and the leaves to 

rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for 

you. (p. 299.) 

Indeed he will keep his promise and break forth 

into his glorious hymn, " To You." (p. 186.) 

Your true soul and body appear before me. . . . 
None has understood you, but I understand you, 



SALVATION AND THE SAVIOUR. 295 

None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to your 

self, 
None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection 

in you, 
None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never 

consent to subordinate you. 
I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God 

beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself. . . . 
You have not known what you are, you have slumbered upon 

yourself all your life. . . . 
The mockeries are not you. 

Underneath them and within them I see you lurk, . . . 
If these conceal you from others they do not conceal you from 

me. . 
Whoever you are, claim your own at every hazard, (p. 186-187.) 

This is the " new religion," the " greater re- 
ligion," which yet is not new. Behind our most mod- 
ern philosophy and art is " the same old heart and 
brain ;" the " insight and inspiration of the same old 
humanity." The "physiognomy" alone can change, 
thinks Whitman. (Cf. Pr., p. 335.) 

However, it is frankly as "Poet" that he sees 
the "Saviour." In literature is to be the soul of 
democracy. It is to be a general consciousness. (Cf 
Pr., p. 247.) " The Song of the Answerer," " By Blue 
Ontario's Shore," and " Democratic Yistas " have this 
thought for burden ; and Whitman would contend that 
after all this notion is confirmed by the history of the 
greatest teacher of antiquity and the nature of his influ- 
ence to-day. In the simple home it is Jesus the Poet, 
the maker of certain beautiful parables, who influences 
for good. It is his life, itself the poem of poems, 
which, apart from all theories about his person and 
his work, touches the souls of men, and infilters itself 
into their lives. Of course by "literature" we know 



296 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

just what Whitman means. For him the poet is a 
" free channel of himself," (Pr., p. 268), giving 
"things without increase or diminution." " He takes 
his data from science. {Of. Pr., p. 269.) His manner 
is characterized by an " absence of tricks." (Pr., p. 
272.) His subject is " not nature, but man." (Pr.,p.298.) 
He has the "rapt vision" to which the " seen becomes 
the prophecy of the unseen " (Pr., p. 299) ; he is the 
complete lover of the universe," "leaving room ahead 
of himself" (Pr., p. 266), and he treats even the 
universal from no fictitious point of view, but from 
that which he actually occupies. (Pr., p. 229.) He 
himself illustrates his doctrine for he is 

The glory and extract thus far of things and of the human 
race. (p. 137.) 

" Leaves of Grass " also, since " personal force is 
behind every thing " (p. 435), presents us a "Person;" 
(p. 438) and so, for the true "Answerer " " the Maker 
of poems," who " settles justice, reality, immortality " 
(p. 137), he "gives us himself" after all (p. 66), having, 
as he admits, unconsciously taken upon himself to be 
an Answerer. 

6. IMMORTALITY. 

Let us now turn our attention to the doctrine of im- 
mortality as it was conceived by Walt Whitman. In 
this region especially are his theological exotics exuber- 
ant. His doctrine of the divine Self has a latent strain 
of oriental mysticism. In his dealing, however, with 
life, death, and immortality — the progress of that 
divine Self beyond these known conditions — he orien- 
talizes, if possible, yet more decidedly. And as he 
laid great stress on " what " a man or a nation " thinks 



IMMORTALITY. 297 

of death" because in his opinion the "idea of im- 
mortality, above all other ideas," is to " give crown- 
ing religious stamp to democracy in the new world " 
(Pr., p. 281), it is incumbent upon every sympathetic 
student to ascertain just what Whitman himself 
thought likely to be the form of the doctrine suited 
to modern times. Here, too, I conceive, it is not my 
duty to criticise but to present. Strictures are al- 
ways an inviting field for the flying of rhetorical 
kites. All you can learn from them, though, is how 
the wind of prejudice is blowing for him who holds 
the strings. I venture to think a painstaking 
mosaic of Whitman's chief utterances will serve the 
reader better than some gratuitous observations of the 
present writer on the damnable wuckedness of heresy ! 
Let it be clearly understood, however, that there 
is nothing willful and capricious in Whitman's adop- 
tion of views on these subjects unusual to us of the 
West. Indeed, his doctrines,* though often undoubt- 
edly coincident with oriental theories are developed 
for very different reasons. They originate with him in 
his passion for an ideal democracy, an ultimate divine 
City of Friends, where there will be no occasion for 
the preference of one to another, because all are pos- 
sitively equal. 

Much as Whitman believes in "love" he never 
could adopt it as a provisional solution of the prob- 
lem of divine justice. He never cared to believe that 
"stars differ from one another in glory." (1 Cor. 



* See footnote of this essay at the end of Section 8 (p. 314) for 
corroborative evidence on Whitman's independent development 
of those ideas concerning which the suspicion of direct deriva- 
tion from oriental theosophies is most plausible. 



298 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

xv, 41.) Such a doctrine seemed to him a projection 
of arbitrary social distinction into the sphere of eter- 
nity. He could not believe in a cosmic partiality. 
All must have had the same beginning. All must end 
in the same perfection. The different degrees of 
natural endowment can not of course be chance ; if 
they can not be ascribed to divine caprice, after the 
Calvinistic fashion, there is only room left for the 
thought that the physical and spiritual capital with 
which we start here is what we have earned according 
to universal law in an eternal pre-existence. The 
differences to us, which make the doctrine of " equal- 
ity " incredible, and that of "fraternity" therefore 
difficult of reduction to practice, are only a matter of 
relative speed. God fixes the beginning and the 
end — nay, is the beginning and the end. He gives us 
indefinite time, and leaves us free to choose our 
route. We can travel in a straight line, or in vast 
spirals, or in fantastic loops and labyrinthine tangles. 
But the end, "the seed perfection," was within the 
"first huge nothing " (p. 71), and is to the open spir- 
itual eye so distinctly visible as to make even now the 
democratic faith a beautiful certainty. 

The thought of the family in which each rejoices 
that he is really surpassed by some brother or sister ; 
the delight of self-subordination to those we love ; 
the keen selfless enjoyment, in sympathy, of the 
greatness that is greater than any we shall ever at- 
tain ; the delicious attribution of our greatness to 
those less great, not as ours, but as a revelation of 
His who is their Father and ours ; a communion of 
reciprocal aspiration and inspiration up a vast stair- 
way of grades of being, one current of holy Love, 



IMMORTALITY. 299 

and beatific selflessness running up and down the 
chain of joined hands : (God Himself the unity of 
this eternal diversity — the white light in which the 
several rays are absorbed, lost to vision, though still 
continuous distinct elements of its manifold whole) : 
such symbol ideas of the life beyond were apparently 
incompatible with a thorough belief in democracy, 
according to Whitman. It was not for their strange- 
ness' sake that he suggests a Swedenborgian spiritual 
body, a Hindu metempsychosis, and hints a resolution 
of all inequality in a " One formed out of all," (p. 21) 
making the " vast similitude " the night creates to 
the eye (cf. p. 207) or sleep to the mind, significant of 
the " Truth :" 

The antipodes, and every one between this and them in the dark, 

I swear they are averaged now — one is no better than the other, 

The night and sleep have likened them and restored them. 

I swear they are beautiful, 

Every one that sleeps is beautiful, every thing in the dim light is 

beautiful, 
The wildest and bloodiest is over, and all is peace. 
Peace is always beautiful, 
The myth of heaven indicates peace and Night, (pp. 330-1.) 

Not, thus, as hitherto customary among us, the 
day, that distinguishes, but the night that charitably 
and, one might say, immorally covers all disparities, 
and fuses in one tranquil mystery all that is, serves 
"Whitman as symbol of his ultimate Ideal. (Cf. Pr., 
pp. 101, 119, 126; L. of G. 341, 369.) 

There never could have been in Whitman any 
love of exotics as such. 

Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship? (p. 271) 
is one of his searching questions to the would-be poet 
of America. For the poet must be original ; singers and 



300 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

rhymers as he calls them, amused with " a prettiness,' ? 
are not under obligation to create. (Cf. p. 272.) But in 
the poet's work every thing must be native ; and the 
more one ponders over the doctrines of apparently ori- 
ental origin, the more one is convinced they are with 
Whitman developed from within. Transcendental sen- 
timents consistent with a "divine democracy" took 
speculative formal elements from such eastern doc- 
trines as were suited for wholesome and complete 
assimilation by them; and with Whitman these senti- 
ments were never allowed to forget their immediate 
origin: — an unreasoned faith in the unqualified equal- 
ity and fraternity of man.* 

See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that, 

Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that. (p. 73.) 

Now when the soul is at its highest vital pitch it 
declares confidently : 

I know I have the best of time and space, and was never meas- 
ured, and never will be measured, (p. 73.) 

I know I am deathless, 

I know this orbit of mine can not be swept by a carpenter's com- 
pass, 



* Democracy is to Whitman so wonderful, because it is, as he 
conceives it, the method of Nature. (Pr., pp. 68-69.) It individ- 
ualizes and universalizes. (Pr.,p. 220.) The individualization is 
the source itself of sympathy, as a clear self-knowledge implies a 
knowledge of others. Sympathy universalizes. This sympathy 
or love he terms adhesiveness. (Pr., foot-note, p. 247.) Poetry is 
to be the Soul of democracy (Pr., p. 247), in that it is to individ- 
ualize men, bring them to self-knowledge. It is to be the vehicle 
of religion. (Pr., pp. 222, 279.) For an understanding of his 
views on the essence of democracy perhaps the shortest helpful 
essay is his " Carlyle from an American point of view." (Pr., pp. 
170-178.) The three prefaces and "Democratic Vistas" should 
be read if possible. 



IMMORTALITY. 301 

I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt 
stick at night, 

I laugh at what you call dissolution, 

And I know the amplitude of time. (p. 45.) 

He is not of those who assert that it makes no 
difference whether or not there be any outlook beyond 
the laying down of the body: — 

Is to-day nothing? is the beginningless past nothing? 

If the future is nothing they are just as surely nothing, (p. 333.) 

The future is no more uncertain than the present, (p. 151.) 

Do you suspect death ? If I were to suspect death I should die 

now, 
Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well suited toward an- 
nihilation? (p. 337.) 

But the fact is he does "walk pleasantly and well 
suited ;" and though he can not cogently reason out to 
a satisfactory conclusion, he sees in the facts an imma- 
nent assurance: 

I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen is provided for 
in the inherences of things, (p. 342.) 

Did you think Life was so well provided for, and Death, the pur- 
port of all Life, is not well provided for? (p. 342.) 

For, apparently, life is for death : 

What invigorates life invigorates death ; (p. 151.) 

so much so that 

Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according. 

-(p. 346.) 

A thing is never understood but in relation to its 
origin and end. The mystery of life is not without 
reason : 

! I see now that life can not exhibit all to me, as the day can not, 

1 see that I am to wait for what will be explained by death. 

-(p. 345.) 

The question " what is life?" involves the question 



302 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

" what is death?" The thought that they are one, 
while it gives us no clearer understanding of life, 
leaves the soul at all events satisfied. We have seen 
about us the wonderful play of life. Every spring 
from " dead clods and chills as from low burial graves," 
a "thousand forms" rise. "Bloom and growth" im- 
ply materials, (p. 399.) In decay Whitman smells 
"the white roses sweet and scented" and reaches to 
"leafy lips" and "to the polished breasts of melons." 
(p. 77.) " What chemistry !" he cries, considering 
"that all is clean forever and forever," and an ecstasy 
fills him when he realizes that the earth which 

Gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings at 

last, 
Grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, 

and in spite of all attempts to pollute, "turns harm- 
less and stainless on its axis." (pp. 286-7.) 

Now, a consideration of the destiny of man in the 
"light of the processes wherein" life "seems" the 
leaving of many deaths " would lead us up to a 
doctrine like that of George Eliot's ' Choir In- 
visible.' " But although (with Whitman), we may 
believe this to be a doctrine of immortality entirely 
true so far as it goes, nothing prevents us (with 
Whitman also) going beyond it to further assertions 
of the perpetuation of spiritual being, if we are not 
yet reconciled to death, when told that life is a con- 
tinual dying. We may admit that the earth is falling 
to the sun every moment while aware that she is not 
arriving at her destination very fast. Similarly the 
bird is sinking earthward, but the libration of his 
wings is at the same time lifting him heavenward, 
and so he soars on quietly in the blue serene. 



IMMORTALITY. 303 

O living always, always dying ! 

O the burials of me past and present, 

me while I stride ahead, material, visible as ever. 

—(p. 344.) 

That is just it. Our life is a delicate balance in 
favor of the organism between constructive energies 
and destructive forces. Face to face with death, in- 
deed, the horrible doubt comes : 

Matter is conqueror — matter triumphant, continues forever. 

-(p. 341.) 
Are souls drowned and destroyed so ? 
Is only matter triumphant? (p. 345.) 

.But as a loyal Positivist you cry " No ! " Soul 
triumphs as fully as matter. No form of matter 
abides. No form of soul does either. A spiritual 
chemistry analogous to that of the physical world 
actually perpetuates all that is precious, 

And nothing endures but personal qualities, (p. 152.) 
If all come to ashes of dung, 

If maggots and rats ended us, then Alarum ! for we are betraved. 

-(p. 337.) 

You may say that the martyrs live. 

They live in other young men, Kings, 
They live in brothers again to defy you, 
They were purified by death, they were taught and exalted. 

-(p. 212.) 

Doubtless this is perfectly reasonable. It is a 
matter besides not of speculation but of experience, 
and, as shown by the quotations, Whitman heartily 
agrees with all this. Not by the elimination of the 
spiritually weak (as unfit to survive), but rather by the 
elimination of the spiritually strong (as needing no 
longer to survive), is virtue in this w T orld increased. 
For every one true man slain two arise in his place. 



304 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

Propagation of spiritual qualities is not by physical 
inheritance, but by moral inoculation. So is 

The loftiest of life upheld by death, (p. 366.) 
It is a noble thing to sing the song of the old 
California trees : 

Nor yield we mournfully, majestic brothers, 

We who have grandly filled our time ; 

With Nature's calm content, with tacit huge delight, 

We welcome what we wrought for through the past, 

And leave the field for them. 

For them predicted long, 

For a superber race, they too to fill their time, 

For them we abdicate, in them ourselves ye forest kings ! 

—(p. 166-7.) 

7. PERSONAL IDENTITY. 

But true as all this doubtless is, it is hard to be- 
lieve that " personal qualities " can only be trans- 
ferred as flame from torch to torch. 

"I swear nothing is good to me that ignores 
individuals." (p. 341.) And this sort of " qualitative 
immortality " does absolutely ignore the individual. 

" Only what satisfies souls is true." (p. 201.) 
This Comtist doctrine in and of itself can not sat- 
isfy the soul. We do not believe we are " qualities" 
merely. We know we are substance ; whatever that 
may be, it is what we are. If we were conscious of 
ourselves as " mere qualities " undoubtedly the propa- 
gation of them would be the continuance of our con- 
scious life. Whitman, thinking of the past history 
of the race, asks significantly : 

Are those billions of men really gone ? 

Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone ? 

Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us f 

Did they achieve nothing for good for themselves t 



PERSONAL IDENTITY. 305 

I believe all those men and women . . . every one exists, etc. 

-(p. 289.) 
What do you think has become of the young and old men ? 
And what do you think has become of the women and children ? 
They are alive and well somewhere, 
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, 
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the 

end to arrest it, 
And ceased the moment life appeared. 
All goes onward and onward, nothing collapses, 
And to die is different from what any one supposed and luckier. 

-(p. 34.) 

"In fact I know I am deathless" (p. 44) in an 

individual way. 

There is that in me — I do not know what it is — but I know it is 

in me. . . . 
I do not know it — it is without name. . . . 
It is not chaos or death— it is form, union, plan — 
It is eternal life — it is Happiness, (pp. 77-78.) 

Then, too, when "I plead" in my heart with the 
universe " for my brothers and sisters " (p. 78) I can 
not but remember "the young man " and "the young 
woman put by his side" — their lives only a beau- 
tiful morning ; " the little child that peeped in at 
the door, and then drew back and was never seen 
again" — a mere false start; "the old man who 
has lived without purpose," and now that it is too 
late, has become aware of it, " and feels it with bit- 
terness worse than gall ;" there are the diseased, 
the degraded, those still half-brutish, those that are 
" sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to 
slip in." (p. 70.) For these he perceives that life as 
we know it does not provide ; they can not be over- 
looked in the universal providence ; that something 
which provides for them is again Life. Only Life can 



306 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

complete life. Of this Life, "this heavenly mansion," 
death is " the opener and usher" (p. 213), to it death 
is " the exquisite transition." (p. 373.) Love teaches 
this lesson : 

Death, death, death, death, death! (p. 201.) 
and the " vast heart, like a planet's chained and 
chaffing" of the moonlit sea — telling its "tale of 
cosmic elemental passion" (p. 392) utters also : 

The word of the sweetest song and all songs, 
That strong and delicious word. . . . (p. 201.) 

But not in grief only is this felt to be love's 
natural lesson : 

For how calm, how solemn it grows to ascend to the atmosphere 

of lovers. 
Death or life — I am then indifferent, my soul declines to prefer. 
(I am not sure but the high soul of lovers welcomes death most.) 

-(p. 96.) 
. . . You are folded inseparably, you, love and death are. 
Nor will I allow you to balk me any more with what I was calling 

life, 
For now it is conveyed to me that you are the purports essential, 
That you abide in those shifting forms of life, for reasons, and 

that they are mainly for you, 
That you beyond them come forth to remain the real reality. 

-(p. 97.) 

The great intellectual insights into life, as loudly 

and clearly as love does, speak of death. 

I foresee too much, it means more than I thought, 
It appears to me I am dying, (p. 381.) 

Indeed, " Fancy," to which at death the poet says 
farewell, may be but another name for it. 

May be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs. 

—(p. 422.) 

therefore, " retaining " his " heart's and soul's un- 



PERSONAL IDENTITY. 307 

mitigated faith" up "to the last" (Pr., p. 520) the 
dying poet cries : 

Good-bye — and hail! my Fancy ! (p. 422.) 

It is not mere despair of this life ; it is life at its 
height that promises continuance and completion. It 
is sympathy, love, it is transcendent moments of vital 
vision, it is flashes of spiritual illumination, it is this 
all which urges the soul to say deliberately aloud : 

I do not think life provides for all, and for time and space, but I 
believe Heavenly Death provides for all. (p. 342.) 

Death of earth is birth of heaven. How does the 
soul know this ? How can you be sure you should 
call it " heavenly ? " May it not indeed be " hellish ? " 
If justice is not fully shown us here and now, may 
not a monster Injustice, naked, bloodsmeared, eyes 
lurid in the dark — savage tooth and claw eager to 
rend us — hold despotic sway in those realms un- 
known ? To this Whitman can only answer that he 
has not found a lack of justice here. " What is" is 
well with reference to what was. " What will be 
will be well " therefore with reference to " what is." 
(p. 335.) " The law of promotion and transformation 
can not be eluded." (p. 336.) There is no evil at all 
in this our experience of life but what amounts to a 
"lagging in the race," and that will be set right by 
indefinite time. 

I do not know what is untried and afterward, 

But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient and can not fail. 

-(P- 70.) 
Whither I walk I can not define, but I know it is good, 
The whole universe indicates that it is good, 
The past and the present indicate that it is good. (p. 337.) 



308 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

Therefore, he can invoke death with a gentle 
song (p. 346) as though singing his own painless 
birth, or soothing his past to sleep awhile in the 
gentle cradle of the grave. 

But once grant this indestructible identity 
throughout change to man, why should it be denied 
to animals and trees ? Why, the very thought of 
fixed species is odious.* Nothing ought to be ar- 
bitrarily fixed forever. " Every thing " for Whitman 
" has an eternal soul." 

The trees have rooted in the ground ! the weeds of the sea have ! 
the animals ! (p. 337.) 

The soul " receives identity through materials." 

(p. 146.) It built up out of these a body, and so the 

soul " received identity by its body." 

That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew 
I should be of my body. (p. 131.) 

This bod}^ was "born" of its "mother" to 

" identify " the soul. (p. 335.) 

The known life, the transient, 

Is to form and decide identity for the unknown life, the permanent. 

-(p. 337.) 

The world about it " leads " the soul to " identity " 
and "body" (p. 349) and offers it further: 

The temporary use of materials for identity's sake ; (p. 374.) 
and finally, "there is nothing but immortality." 
(p. 337.) 

All is preparation for it — and identity is for it. (Id.) 



* " On the Origin of Species, etc.," 1859, " The Descent of 
Man, etc.," 1871, Whitman, as Goethe (Wordsworth on one oc- 
casion) and Browning must be credited with a thorough grasp of 
the idea of universal evolution before the epoch making books of 
Darwin were composed. 



PERSONAL IDENTITY. 309 

But if " identity " always implies " body " and the 
" corpse " we will leave will be but " excrementitions," 
(p. 344) — indeed, " for reasons " it is " myself" who 
" discharge my excrementitious body " (p. 147) — there 
must be a " real body doubtless left to me for other 
spheres." The " voided body " returns to " further 
offices," to " the eternal uses of the earth." (Id.) If 
even now "it is not my material eyes which finally 
see, nor my material body which finally loves, walks, 
laughs, shouts, embraces, procreates" (p. 146), then 
even now there must be a real body that does these 
things. 

The living look upon the corpse with their eyesight 
But without eyesight lingers a different living and looks curiously 
on the corpse, (p. 333.) 

to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and 

look at where I cast them. (p. 344.) 

Such lines then as these are not to be taken as 
fanciful altogether. Whitman does not doubt that 
"interiors have their interiors, and that exteriors have 
their exteriors;" "that the eyesight has another eye- 
sight, and the hearing another hearing, and the voice 
another voice." (p. 342.) Even now to the seer 
"your true soul and body appear." (p. 186.) Just as 
surely as 

1 see one building, the house that serves him for a few years, or 

seventy or eighty years at most, 

if my spiritual eyes were open could 

1 see one building, the house that serves him longer than that. 

-(p. 334.) 

Indeed, Whitman can see his fellow-man con- 
structing, though unconsciously, "the house of him- 
self or herself" that will "serve for all time." (p. 304.) 



310 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

Nor does this "real body" pass out empty, as it 
"passes to fitting spheres," for it "carries what has 
accrued to it from the moment of birth to the mo- 
ment of death." (p. 25.) It has been thus fashioned, 
invisibly, by the hands of life to serve as organ to 
your veritable Self. No bullet can really "kill what 
you really are." (p. 251.) 

What you are picks its way. (p. 188.) 
Nay, already while leading this life of fleshly vi- 
cissitude "Apart from the pulling and hauling stands 
what I am. ... I witness and wait." (p. 32.) 
What is more, this "Me myself" (p. 32) is not the 
soul, if Whitman be relied upon to use his terms with 
any accuracy, for elsewhere we read: 

I too, with my soul and body, 

We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way. (p. 185.) 

We should have then, according to our review so 
far of Whitman's doctrine, at least four distinct ele- 
ments in man : — 

(1) the excrementitious body. 

(2) the real body. 

(3) the soul. 

(4) Me myself. 

8. PERPETUITY OF CHARACTER. 

But all this would seem unnecessary speculation 
if for the soul beyond these spheres there were nothing 
more to provide for than identity. "What has ac- 
crued to the soul" on earth, of which the real body is 
vehicle, must be in itself a secure possession. Now 
on no subject is Whitman more emphatic than on the 



PERPETUITY OF CHARACTER. 311 

universality of Law. " The whole Universe is abso- 
lute Law." (Pr., p. 336.) Miracles in the sense of 
wonders all things whatsoever most assuredly are: — 

Why, who makes much of a miracle? 

As to me I know of nothing but miracles (p. 301) ; 

in the sense of exceptions, however, there can be none 
without immediately reducing cosmos to chaos. " The 
great master has nothing to do with miracles." (Pr., 
p. 270.) The true modern Poet denies all exceptions. 
" Law is the unshakable order of the universe forever ; 
and the law over all, and law of laws, is the law of 
successions; that of the superior law, in time, gradu- 
ally supplanting and overwhelming the inferior one." 
(Pr., p. 219.) This passage has immediate reference, 
to be sure, to "physical force being superseded by 
that of the spirit," but its language implies that it is 
of general validity. Thus we have evolution as the 
" law of laws." 

With the irrefragableness of law * and with the 
doctrine besides that " only the soul is of itself — all 
else has reference to what ensues" so that in it is the 
real judge of conduct,! it is clear there can be "no 
possible forgiveness or deputed atonement." (p. 291; 
Pr., p. 273.) " Each man to himself, and each woman 
to herself, is the word of the past and the present, and 
the true word of immortality." J (p. 178.) Jehovah, 

* Cf. Miracles, p. 301. 

t Compare " There is no oue or any particle but has reference 
to the soul " (p. 25) with " It is not consistent with the reality of 
the soul to admit that there is any thing in the known universe 
more divine than men and women." (Pr., p. 270.) 

t See in Appendix a note on Lord Byron as a " Chanter of 
Personality " in the sense of a moral responsibility that can not 
be shifted on another. 



312 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

Brahm, or Saturnius, Universal Law in Time, "is re- 
lentless " and " forgives no man " — " dispenses . . . 
judgments inexorable without the least remorse." (p. 
339.) Expiation alone blots out : 

Miserable ! yet for thy errors, vanities, sins, I will not now rebuke 

thee, 
Thy unexampled woes and pangs have quelled them all, 
And left thee sacred, (p. 306.) 

It is, however, not suffering as such that helps. 
It is suffering, of the kind that quells the sins by 
stimulating growth, which of itself alone amounts to 
a " forgiveness." 

In the higher structure of a human self, or of community, the 
Moral, the Religious, the Spiritual, is strictly analogous to the 
subtle vitalization and antiseptic play called Health in the physi- 
ological structure. (Pr., p. 471.) 

Reformation comes from within. Evil being un- 
derdevelopment, all that is needed is development. 
There is, when the ways are amended, no sin left to 
forgive. 

Of all " leadings," " none lead to greater things " 
than occupations " lead to." (p. 175.) Columbus 
gave God a " long and crowded life of active work, 
not adoration merely." (p. 323.) 

Ah! little recks the laborer, 

How near his work is holding him to God, 

The loving Laborer through space and time. (p. 157.) 

For the law of action and reaction being equal 
and contrary extends into the spiritual world, and is 
its chief law : " Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall 
he also reap." (Gal. vi, 7.) 

All that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence, 

Not a move can a man or woman make that affects him or her in 



PERPETUITY OF CHARACTER. 313 

a day, month, any part of the direct lifetime, or the hour of 

death, 
But the same affects him or her onward afterward through the 

indirect lifetime, (p. 290.) 
All that is to be henceforth thought or done by you, whoever you 

are, or by any one, 
These inure, have inured, shall inure, to the identities from which 

they sprang, or shall spring, (p. 291.) 

Therefore, there is a " prudence that suits im- 
mortality." (p. 289.)* True, "caution" has refer- 
ence to the eternal, preferring it to the temporal. 
(Of. Pi\, p. 272.) It "knows that only that person 
has really learned " the lesson of life well, who has 
" learned to prefer results" (p. 291),f "immense 
spiritual results " (p. 374) ; and aware that every act 
" has results beyond death as really as before death " 
(p. 290), the truly prudent man, whose caution goes 
far enough (Pi\, p. 272), realizes to the full that 

Charity and personal force are the only investments worth any 
thing for after all. (p. 290.) 

"Itself only finally satisfies the soul" (p. 291), 
and not any thing exterior and adventitious con- 
tributing to its real secret felicity, which as seen before 
is always an " Efflux of the Soul." 

We shall have to add then to our analysis of the 
constitution of man, according to Whitman, a fur- 
ther element inhering in the real body and the soul, 
the perpetuity of which is strongly affirmed — the Char- 
acter. 

We have thus five distinct elements : 



* Cf. Emerson's Essays on Prudence, Self-Reliance, and Com- 
pensation. 

t Not utilitarian doctrine, e. g., his idea of the greatness of 
defeat, etc., pp. 43, 45, 288, etc. 



314 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

-p 1 f (1) excrementitious Body, 
±5oa -> r \ (2) the real Body, 

, f (3) the Character, 
boul i (4) the Soul, 

Spirit — (5) Me myself, 

which, if we have bracketed the first two couples, are- 
very readily reducible to the Pauline trichotomy.* 



9. 

In the matter of Whitman's theology there now 
remains only to adduce evidence as to what his con- 
ception of immortal life really is. ''Something there 
is more immortal than the stars." (p. 206.) He be- 
lieves in nothing short of perfection for each and alL 
It is part of Whitman's very manliness that he does 
not want privileged classes, saints or heroes. He 
wants equal opportunities. He does not himself get 

* Particular evidence of the view taken in this paper (that 
Whitman's oriental doctrines were not merely borrowed or 
adopted) may be found in the fact that his analysis of man gives 
us five elements only instead of the Hindu Seven. To make them 
seven, the " Me Myself " Avould have to be declared a Trinity. If 
it be contended that he does recognize Father, Son and Holy 
Ghost, it must be remembered that where he does so, he gives- 
similar recognition to Satan. In case then you take the " Square 
Deific" literally as analyzing the "Divine Me Myself," you would 
have eight and not seven elements. But, as indicated already, I 
do not understand the " Square Deific " as a study of "God," but 
of our " Idea of God," quite another thing. Whitman does not 
presume to give us a bit of Divine Psychology. Of the inner life 
of Diety, he does not pretend to know more than any other sane 
and enlightened mortal. And, for one, " with the Mystery of 
God he dares not dally." 



" TRAVELING SOULS " AND THEIR END. 315 

.■any mean comfort from being above others. He is 
thoroughly consistent, as most revolutionaries and 
vindicators of the people's rights, alas, are not: — 

.By God ! I will accept nothing which all can not have their coun- 
terpart of on the same terms, (p. 48.) 

He sings exultantly : — 

Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand 
roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed em- 
blem and sustenance. 

Forever alive, forever forward . . . 

They go ! they go ! I know that they go, but I know not where 
they go, 

But I know that they go toward the best. (p. 127.) 

Feeling that he has not really finished the work 
he might have done, not learned the lesson out, not 
tasted all the legitimate delights here, he believes that 
he will "come again upon the earth after five thou- 
sand years." (p. 69.) When he meets a man full of 
his achievements he pointedly reminds him of a cer- 
tain possibility likely to calm him : 

Have you outstript the rest ? are you the president ? 
It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there, every one and still 
pass on. (p. 45.) 

Clearly it will not be in this particular earth life. 
To members of low and unfortunate races he addresses 
words of comfort and encouragement: — 

I do not say one word against you way back there where you 

stand, 
You will come forward in due time to my side. (p. 120.) 

He is not anxious about the ill-born and i 11- 
l>red : — 

The twisted skull waits, the watery or rotten blood waits, 
The child of the glutton waits long, and the child of the drunkard 
waits long, and the drunkard himself waits long. 



316 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

The sleepers that lived and died wait, the far advanced are to go 

on in their turns, and the far behind are to come on in their 

turns, (p. 331.) 
I saw the face of the most smeared and slobbering idiot they had 

at the asylum, 
And I knew for my consolation what they knew not, 
I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother, 
The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement, 
And I shall look again in a score or two of ages, 
And I shall meet the real landlord perfect and unharmed, every 

inch as good as myself, (p. 354.) 

His attitude to the animals is of course exactly 
the same; and why not? Does he not feel between 
them and himself a very decided kinship? 

They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their 

possession, 
I wonder where they got those tokens, 

Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them? 

-(p. 54.) 

Nor will he confine his doctrine of progress from 
form to form by any means to animals: — 

The vegetables and the minerals are all perfect, and the impon- 
derable fluids perfect ; 

Slowly and surely they have passed on to this, and slowly and 
surely they yet pass on. (p. 337.) 

How significant, after perusing those extracts to- 
gether, sound not now the words quoted before in a 
feebler sense : — 

As to you Life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, 
(No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before !) (p. 77.) 

He is not one whit tired in spirit: 

All below duly traveled, and still I mount and mount.* (p. 71.) 



* That Whitman ever went further, and found it necessary to 
adopt a theory of cycles or "cosmic incarnations," so to say, is 
very doubtful. The word "cycle" appears three times in L. of 
G., pp. 27, 72, 85. With his anthropocentric view, the cosmos 



" TRAVELING SOULS " AND THEIR END. 317 

We have seen that he has fully kept his word, 
having sung the "Songs of birth and shown that there 
are many births." (p. 380.) 

If any one should protest, but " I do not care to 
be perfect at such a cost; I don't want you to be 
urging me this way. I am tired. Sing me a pleasant 
lullaby instead, about how every thing is going to be 
clone for me!" I fancy sturdy old Walt would answer: 
" Go lull yourself with what you can understand, and 
with pianoforte tunes, for I lull nobody, and you will 
never understand me." (p. 252.) Yet there is a peace 
ahead. That fifth element in man, the Me myself, is 
one in all. To live in it is to be finally at rest. This 
it was the very object of Whitman to glorify, yet 
with beautiful candor he confesses inability to approach 
it for us. 

The diverse shall be no less diverse, but they shall flow and 
unite — they unite now. ■ (p. 331.) 

There is to be yet a " salvation universal," an in- 
describable attainment : 

When I undertake to tell the best, I find I can not. . . . 
I become a dumb man. (p. 179.) 

Aware that . . . before all my arrogant poems the real Me 
stands, yet untouched, untold, altogether unreached, 

Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock congratulatory signs and 
bows, 

With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have 
written, 



did not interest him per se. To account for it was not his object. 
Indeed he tells us (cf. Pr., p. 298) " the rule and demesne of poetry 
will always be not the exterior but the interior, not the macro- 
cosm but microcosm, not Nature but Man. Of the doctrine of 
metempsychosis a good illustration is given in the closing eight 
lines of " The Sleepers." (.p. 332.) (Cf. p. 282 of this essay.) 



318 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

Pointing in silence to these songs and then to the sand beneath, 
I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single 

object, and that no man ever can, 
Nature here in sight of the sea, taking advantage of me to dart 

upon me and sting me, 
Because I have dared to open my mouth and sing at all. 

-(pp. 202-3.) 

In the poem, "A Riddle Song," he shows why 

this is so. That which eludes him is that which 

makes all intelligible, and which itself can only be 

known face to face. 

Haply God's riddle it, so vague and yet so certain, 
The soul for it, and all the visible universe for it, 
And heaven at last for it. (p. 363.) 

It is the terrible " One Self" *— 
The fanged and glittering One whose head is over all, (p. 21.) 

and of wiiom to speak as one's self is absurd, and yet 
as "other than one's Self" absurder still. 

Hymns to the universal God from the universal 
Man are the last fact we discern with mortal eye, il- 
lumined though it be : 

The ocean filled with joy — the atmosphere all joy ! 

Joy! Joy! in freedom, worship, love ! joy in* the ecstasy of life! 

Enough to merely be ! enough to breathe ! 

Joy ! Joy ! all over joy ! (p. 358.)t 

10. whitman's METHODS AND STYLE. 

To compose according to a theory that greatly 
varies from what may be said to have at least been 
immanent in literature before, is a perilous venture. 



* For clearness' sake I have taken some liberties with the 
word "oneself," spelling it differently according to the different 
meanings. 

t See pp. 255-259 for an exposition of the doctrine of the One. 



whitman's methods and style. 319 

Men of great initiative genius and courage will, to be 
sure, always stake life and fame upon a consistent 
protest against tyrannous tradition. But more often 
than not a man's theory of composition is one thing, 
and his practice another. 

]N"ow, Whitman undoubtedly repels many a 
reader by his oracular manner. He is fully aware of 
this. 

These leaves and me you will not understand, 

They will elude you at first arid still more afterward. I will cer- 
tainly elude you. 

Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, 
behold ! 

Already you see I have escaped from you. (p. 98.) 

~Nor is it any thing we can really bring against 
him. He writes to " tease us out of" our usual petty 
** thought." * He delights in paradox. He does not 
try to astonish. The man is free from any conscious 
tricks. The fact is, however, that the whole object 
of Whitman at all times is not to do something for 
his reader, but to make his reader do something for 
himself. 

You are asking me questions and I hear you, 

I answer that I can not answer, you must find out for yourself. 

-(p. 74.) 

If poetry be " criticism of life" or not, is best set- 
tled by the fact perhaps that the only true criticism of 
great poetry is life. Such Walt Whitman's surely is 
if we should accept this test — that the great poetry 
keeps pace with our advance, always a step or two 
ahead — while poetry that is not great we soon leave 
behind : 



* Keat's " Ode to a Grecian Urn ;" the office of all true art. 



820 MODERN PROPHET POETS. 

For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this 

book, 
Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it. (p. 98.) 

Undoubtedly however there are other tests of 
poetry which seem more important to the majority of 
critics. That he should have to "wait to be under- 
stood by the growth of the taste of" himself (p. 273) 
would be nothing peculiar to him; — Wordsworth, 
Shelley, Browning, are well known modern instances 
of an author's having, as it were, to beget a new gen- 
eration of readers. 

But though Whitman's "words" do undoubtedly 
"itch at" one's "ears," till they are understood (p. 75), 
it would be insincere in the most enthusiastic disciple 
not to admit the many difficulties of approach to his 
master which seem at first sight gratuitous tests of pa- 
tience, fortitude, self-control, and one might almost 
add foolhardihood. A man who boldly declares that 
"serving art in its highest" is "only the other name 
for serving God, and serving humanity" (Pr., p. 242), 
would, it might be supposed, spare no pains to make 
what he attempts to create as nearly perfect as possi- 
ble. But it is not so much that Whitman considers 
the "love of the best" a "friend" that only "harries" 
man ;* it is that with him the poem is not on paper, 
or in the ear of the reader, but in his mind. Perfect 
" literary form " to Whitman is whatever most directly 
arouses in the reader's miucl what is in the poet's own. 
He goes even further than this. A moral purpose is 
always latent. "Not the book needs so much to be 
the complete thing, but the reader of the book does." 
(Pr., p. 257.) The reader " must himself construct . . . 



Cf. "Sphinx" of R. W. Emerson. 



whitman's methods and style. 321 

the poem." The poet's language, if "fanned by the 
breath of nature," " seldomer tells a thing than sug- 
gests or necessitates it." (Id.) The poet, because he is a 
poet, wants to make a poet of you. He is — "hungry 
for equals day and night." (Pr., p. 269.) Like Moses 
he cries "would God that all the Lord's people were 
prophets and that the Lord would put his spirit upon 
them."* He will have you not only become quite in- 
dependent of him furnishing your own home-made 
chants, but he will have you illustrate them in what 
you are. "AH must give place to men and women." 
(p. 175.) " How dare you place anything before a 
man?" (p. 272.) "The psalm" does not sing itself, 
therefore he prefers "the singer," and, quite consist- 
ently, the reader is more precious to him than the 
poems he shall peruse, (p. 175.) These are, therefore, 
"not the finish," but rather "the outset." "To none 
will they bring to be content and full." (p. 138.) 
They will be "good health to you." (p. 79.) They 
are "chants . . .to vivify all" (p. 20) by inspiring 
the faith which in turn arouses dormant powers. 

Now it is a fact that Whitman's poems possess, to 
a very eminent degree, this vital suggestiveness.f Nor 
is there any- respectable critic who will quarrel with 
their originality of form as such. He does not con- 
sider our prejudices when he writes. J "People resent 
any thing new as a personal insult" (Pr., p. 482), and 
in support of this he quotes Bacon as saying that 
" the first sight of any work really new and first rate 



* Numb, xi, 29. 

t Whitman does not leave this doctrine of " suggestion " to 
be inferred. (C/. Pr., pp. 483 and 493 ; L. of G., p. 434.) 
t Cf. on writing for the public. (Pr., p. 497.) 



322 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

in beauty or originality always arouses something 
disagreeable and repulsive." (Pr., p. 482.) In this 
we can not but agree with him. But we are still not 
wholly convinced that any true theory of composition 
can justify some things iu Leaves of Grass. In fact 
we are sure that whenever Whitman was most con- 
sistent with an extreme doctrine of "suggestion" 
he utterly failed in his purpose. To men endowed 
with a quick, pictorial imagination, page-long cata- 
logues of geographical and physiological names may 
conceivably be a source of extreme delight, and 
amount to a trip around the world, or to the posses- 
sion of a wonderful human body translucent, nay 
transparent for the investigator's eye. To most men, 
however, these catalogues are a "reductio ad absurd.um" 
of the theory.* They mean little or nothing at all. 
They are simply a weariness to the flesh. Nothing 
perhaps has more contributed to heap deserved ridi- 
cule on Whitman. 

True that a so-called " negligent list of one after 



* Sydney Lanier's use of the " catalogue " in the " Symphony " 
is very astonishing and effective. Each name a note as it were. 
We can not but honestly admit a feeling that the disciple here 
succeeded where the master failed. 

Speaking of Sydney Lanier, were not those clever would-be 
destructive paragraphs in his "English Novel " a somewhat un- 
generous attempt to conceal from himself and his readers his own 
evident indebtedness, in his best poetry, to the rugged singer of 
"athletic manhood?" Poor, sick Sydney Lanier ! How such a 
line as " only health puts one rapport with the universe " must 
have stung him ! But old Walt can well afford to be mag- 
nanimous, and wholly ignores his impertinent critique, including 
Lanier's in the list of names for which he has a " heart-benison " 
and "reverence for their memories," "the galaxy of the past." 
(Of. Pr., pp. 481-482.) 



whitman's methods and style. 323 

another as I happen to call them to me or think of 
them " (p. 89) is not without an inner law, but it is 
one of purely personal association and therefore to us 
readers in all probability an unintelligible law. For 
him the beads maybe made a necklace, but he has cut 
the string and hurried the beads belter skelter into 
our lap. There is no use pretending that we shall 
re-string them. We do not. But, when the list is 
systematic, then we are still more annoyed. We feel 
that he is tricking us. He has had a text-book con- 
veniently at hand, surely, for reference, or his memory 
is really altogether too retentive. 

We are not surprised that there should be much 
incoherence in chants professedly " ecstatic," but that 
the sentence form should be deliberately abandoned is 
somewhat amazing. For after all, if man occupies 
the central position in nature, which Whitman ar- 
rogates for him, he surely has a right to impose on 
nature the laws of his own being. It is quite true 
that things are not respectively subjects and objects 
set off against one another, distinguished from all 
other things, and fettered in unique relations, rep- 
resented by verbs hovering between subjects and 
objects. Xevertheless it is useless to defy man's 
mental constitution. If Whitman does not make 
sentences for us, we must, mentally at least, make 
sentences for ourselves out of his fragments. Still, 
again, we ought to admit with all candor that a 
breathless speed, a sense of kaleidoscopic change, are 
often effects apparently due to this rejection of the 
sentence-form; and we would venture to suggest that 
whenever Whitman deliberately constructed a cata- 
logue, or refused to form sentences, he failed of his 



324 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

purpose, and deserved to fail, but when the verbal in- 
coherency, the bombardment of independent nouns 
was a necessity imposed from within, he succeeded in 
producing the desired result. 

Poetic style, when addressed to the soul, is less definite form, 
outline, sculpture, and becomes vista, music, half tints, and even 
less than half tints. True, it may be architecture ; but again it 
maybe the forest wild wood, or the best effect thereof at twilight, 
the waving oaks, and cedars in the wind, and the impalpable 
odor. (Pr., p. 287.) 

The general truth of this we may admit. We 
may give up the " garden " (Pr., p. 497) for the road- 
side mob of wild flowers; with him, we may prefer 
the Rocky Mountains to a row of pyramids and 
obelisks (Pr., p. 143), and yet might we not protest 
that every thing man makes must have a beginning, 
a middle and an end, a center and a circumference? 
After all, as said above, man imposes on the wildest 
landscape laws of perspective that reduce it to human 
comprehension. It would be more natural if we 
should emancipate things from this arbitrary tyranny, 
but how can we be thus ''faithful to things " (p. 271) 
without failing to reject " whatever insults " our souls 
(p. 273), both which are imperative commands of 
Whitman to the true Poet of Democrac} 7 ? (Pr., p. 
265-6.) Whitman's best poems are neither chaotic, nor 
mechanically symmetrical. They are true organisms. 
They are sons of his spirit " begotten, not made." 

Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distilled from poems pass 

away, 
The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes, 
Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the soil of liter- 
ature, (p. 272.) 

We would not for one moment have Whitman 



whitman's methods and style. 325 

less arrogant, defiant. We have too much enjoyed, 
in sympathy, his great declaration of independence. 
We would boldly assert that it is good, very good, in- 
deed, that Whitman abandoned the old forms of '-'ar- 
bitrary and rhyming metre." We are willing he 
should "soar to the freer, vast, diviner heaven of 
prose." We are quite satisfied, provided his work is 
as he himself demands " subtly and necessarily, always 
rhythmic" . . . " distinguishable easily enough." 
(Pr., p. 323.) This it is not always. It does not always 
"soar." It often has no wings at all. It sometimes 
falls far below the veriest flats of prose. Is Matthew 
Arnold's Philomela verse? and therefore poetry? 
Then quite as surely must Whitman's good work be 
recognized as poety, even if Sidney and Shelley be 
vociferously voted heretics by a majority of critics for 
calling Plato a poet, though he wrote in prose. 
Rhythm is the pulse of poetry ; should it not then 
quicken with emotion, become sluggish almost sus- 
pended, with the feeling of inner stillness; or should 
it by its clock-like regularity argue the mere abstract- 
ness of the poem, our utter indifference to it, the entire 
lack of vital sympathy between spirit and form, mak- 
ing the form not a living expressive body, but a life- 
less vessel wholly unconcerned with the nature of its 
contents?* To quote superb instances from Whit- 
man would be a delightful and extremely easy task. 



* Again, in this matter of " organic form," Lanier has grasped 
the same idea as Whitman. " Corn " and two of his " Hymns to 
the Marshes," in some respects his very best work, have, pre- 
serving rhyme, and with an over-use, perhaps, of alliteration, ut- 
terly abandoned metre of a fixed kind, and an arbitrary stanza, 
while the rhythm is made to impart the mood. 



326 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

Whitman rarely spoils good matter with bad form ; it 
is because matter unlit for use, or such as he at all 
events did not know how to use, is mixed with it, that 
there are gaps, bottomless pits of — not prose — but 
something as much below plain prose as his levels and 
heights are above it. As for his vocabulary, no one 
will say that Whitman was a slavish " follower of 
beauty," though, again, he was not always her 
" august master." (p. 137.) He is right, no doubt,' 
in saying that "slang" is an "attempt" "to escape 
from bald literalism, and express itself illimitably " 
made by common humanity; but, is it a successful 
attempt always, and is common humanit}^ to be the 
measure of "the Answerer?" If we are to see our- 
selves glorified in him, he must be above our faults, 
succeed easily where we fail. Barbaric importations,^ 
words ruthlessly mutilated, a disregard for the asso- 
ciative atmosphere of words, are complaints easily 
lodged against our poet. We do wish he had not 
given the adversary so much occasion to blaspheme. 
We love the man, we reverence his purpose. One 
who prefers me, the reader, to his own poem, I will 
endure much from — things at the hand of another 
wholly beyond a moment's sufferance. Why "meat 
of a man?" Would not "flesh" do? Why "Ma 
femme" for "bride" or "wife?" Why "rapport" 
for "touch" or " sympathy ?" f Why some of the 



* If Whitman hoped these foreign words used occasionally 
would serve to express the composite nature of the American 
people, he failed signally. Could we assimilate as ill our immi- 
grants as Whitman's English does these unhappy foreign words, 
our people w T ould indeed become a crazy quilt! 

tin his prose, terrific expressions abound: " toploftical," 



" SO LONG." 327 

words that have appeared, in spite of all efforts to ex- 
clude such disturbers of the peace, in the quotations 
made in this paper? We can only, as lovers of Whit- 
man, regret them. We shall learn not to notice 
them. Why a plural verb with a singular subject, or 
the reverse? Why "ye" with a singular noun in an 
apostrophe ? Such trifles sour the temper of the new 
reader, and make proselyting no easy affair. And 
who, having felt that Whitman has done him good, 
does not wish to do a little private unostentatious 
proselyting ? 

Is it necessary to point out in conclusion what are 
Whitman's successes artistically? Perhaps a list of 
poems to read might well be constructed, though we 
now have from Mr. Arthur Stedman a selection which 
can be obtained in America.* Englishmen have been 
more fortunate. j 'Not that I could spare any thing 
from Whitman's volume, but there is a good deal in 
it that is rather strong meat for babes, and for my 
part I should like to put Whitman's book into the 
hands of babes. 

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry— A Song of Joys — 
Song of the Universal — To You — Out of the Cradle 
Endlessly Rocking — Tears — To the Man-of- Warbird 



"civilizee," cohered out of," " literatuses," "fetching up at," 
"technists," " aclruirant toward," " arriere," (= background), etc. 

:;: " Also " Gems from Whitman," by Elizabeth Porter. 

Prof. Oscar L. Triggs, of Chicago University, is now engaged 
upon a long needed " Primer to Whitman." 

t Selections of Walt Whitman's poems, edited with introduc- 
tion by Win. M. Rossetti. Chatto & Windus, London, 1886. 

"Whitman" (selections), edited by Ernest Rhys, in Canter- 
bury Poets. Walter Scott, London. 



328 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

—On the Beach at Night— The World Below the 
Brine — On the Beach at Night Alone — Gods — Beat ! 
Beat! Drums! — The Artillery Man's Vision — When 
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed — This Com- 
post — Warble for Lilac-time — Sparkles from the Wheel 
— The Ox-tamer — Passage to India — Prayer of Co- 
lumbus — A Noiseless Patient Spicier — Thou Orb Aloft 
Full- dazzling — The Mystic Trumpeter — To a Loco- 
motive in Winter — A Riddle Song — Old War Dreams 
— Ashes of Soldiers — Camps of Green — Halcyon Days 
— With Husky, Haughty Lips, Sea. 

This list, by no means of course complete, is made 
with reference to the reader. Nothing in these, we 
fancy, can possibly give him any reasonable offense. 
If he has come to enjoy all of these, let him trust 
himself to the sea. He may swallow a little brine, 
but he will not drown. 

It is altogether of no use to praise. Praise seems 
impertinent to him who has enjoyed, and foolish to 
the prejudiced or unfortunate person who can not 
sympathize. Suffice it to say that minor difficulties 
will settle themselves in time for the student. " With 
care for a man or book such would be surmounted, 
and without it, what avails the faultlessness of 
either ? " No more appropriate words here than 
these of Robert Browning concerning his Sordello. 
The greatest difficulties are for the most part in the 
reader. Walt Whitman never claimed to be more 
than a pioneer. He tells us that in his work "the 
w T ords " are nothing, the drift ™ every thing." (p. 17.) 
Then, too, all his "chants" may not be for you. 
"Each for its kind" (p. 23) says he; mine for me, 
therefore, and yours for you. No doubt he is quite 



329 

ready to " offer his style to any one " (p. 380) and be 
surpassed by the humblest reader. (Of. p. 74.) Un- 
doubtedly some of us who have been brought up in 
hot-houses will feel uncomfortable in his open air, 
but, after the first horror is over, the sensation of 
limitless freedom will probably seem pleasant if any- 
thing. 

As to morals — and decency — of course no one can 
answer such objections. I for one should allow them 
to remain insuperable. If your morals and your 
modesty should be in imminent danger because for- 
sooth Whitman, like your physician, knows you have 
a body, and, like your conscience, is sure you have 
sinned enough not to cast stones at the most degraded 
brother or sister, is it with him, forsooth, you are go- 
ing to be angry when he lets " nature speak with 
original energy?" (p. 27) when he makes his song 
and you meet "the facts face to face?" (p. 271.) 
Do you suppose Whitman never had any qualms 
about his "Adamic" songs? (Cf. Pr., p/l91.) If 
against the wishes of dear friends he would not con- 
sent to their suppression he must have thought he 
had a good reason. He explains. himself fully on this 
point in "Ventures on an old Theme." (Pr., p. 322.) 
If he eliminated the " stock poetic expressions " so 
dear to you, it w 7 ill perhaps comfort you to know it 
cost him a great deal of trouble to do this. (Pr., pp. 
20,518.) If, wishing "the strength of health," not 
of "delirium" (Pr., p. 157), he sometimes gives you 
what he terms the " drench of passions " " life coarse 
and rank " (p. 94), it is better than if he had indulged 
you in spiced innuenclos and prurient proprieties. If 
he annoys you by his perpetual cheer, if in your fits 



330 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

of cultured listlessness or philosophic despondency 
he positively irritates you by giving " himself the 
benefit of the doubt," and insisting that he is happy 
unless he is very sure indeed of the contrary (Pr., p. 
92), it may perhaps be a pleasant thought to you that 
he at times felt " these modern tendencies to turn 
every thing to pathos, ennui, morbidity, dissatisfac- 
tion, death." (Pr., p. 109.) Thirty years of ill health 
could not break his spirit. He insisted that " in the 
fact of life itself" we should " discover and achieve 
happiness." (Pr., p. 249.) 

Do you say, all this optimism would be well in 
Millennial days, not now? Well, he will tell you it is 
good to live in the future. It is magnificent to have 
occasion for the "afflatus" to fall on you, it is glorious 
to hear the "holy ghost" speak within, to have the 
"prophetic vision." (Pr., p. 227.) 

If you are angered by his self-sufficiency, and 
fancy he means really to repel you, it will be well to 
remember that " though the live-oak glistens " solitary, 
Whitman knows very well that he at all events "could 
not without a friend, a lover near." (p. 106.) If 
you wish he had been a greater scholar, like yourself 
vevv learned, incapable of technical blunders even 
when off his guard, you will be apt to forgive him . 
when you consider how on the occasion of his remark 
that Browning "must be deeply studied out" and 
"quite certainly repays the trouble," he frankly ad- 
mitted that he for his part was " too old and indolent," 
that he could not "study" and "in fact never" had 
"studied." (Pr., p. 483.) 

After all Whitman is what he is. If you want 
him to take you by the hand he will do it in his own 



331 

hearty, rough way. He will not shake your arm out 
of joint, but no one can promise that your monocle 
w r ill not he dislodged from its supercilious place; — 
and who would venture his reputation as a prophet 
by assuring you that your immaculate shirt bosom 
will suffer no rumples if he should happen to put his 
big brawny arms about you? 

In conclusion, you may ask me, why can I not 
get the same thing Whitman gives from another — say, 
Emerson or Browning? Well, perhaps you can. The 
fact however is that Emerson's words sound imper- 
sonal, abstract and cold — vague, unreal — while there 
is no doubt you shall have to understand Whitman. 
He drives his ideas like wedges of live lightning into 
your soul. No shields or helmets or customary con- 
vention will protect it. You may walk with Brown- 
ing (I say you may) and take an absui-d delight in his 
difficulties as such, you may fancy all he says has 
reference only to this man or that woman — you may 
apply the sermon to your neighbor in the pew and 
remain Pharisaically content — you may look upon 
Browning's poetry only as an arsenal for controversial 
weapons, and use Elvire's husband's logic to justify 
your marital irregularities, or Bishop Blougram's argu- 
ments to fortify your sonl in lucrative deceit — (I have 
known abishop to quote his sophistries copiously, elabo- 
rately, in adefense of his own theological position !) — but 
one thing is very sure, Whitman's Message is to you. It 
is positively you he means. There is no doubt about 
this. When he lashes, it is you are hurt. When he 
mocks, it is you who feel rebuked. When he exults, 
it is you who are uplifted from the slough of your 
despond. When yon try to pose as virtuous, it is you 



332 MODERN POET PROPHETS. 

he will denounce. If you are dealing in " doubts, 
swervings," and subtle "doublings upon" yourself 
"typical of our age" (Pr., p. 403), it is out of you he 
will "shame silliness" (p. 38) and make you very sure 
of yourself. If you are thinking of what a poor 
chance in life you have, he will tell you it is just what 
you make of it, and that you can be a hero, "a God" 
if you please. Now all this is said to you — unmistak- 
ably to you — and there is no possible evasion! How 
then can you afford to wrap yourself in a cloak of re- 
fined prejudices? 

Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why 

should you not speak to me ? 
And why should I not speak to you ? (p. 18.) 



APPENDIX. 



DIAGRAM OF A SECTION OF THE ROSE OF THE 
BLESSED, SHOWING THE CONSTITUENT ELE- 
MENTS OF IDEAL WOMANHOOD. 



St, John — St. Peter 



Downward. 




Adam — Moses 



Downward. 



^ 4 St. Augustine. 
V 5 St. Benedict. 
6 St. Francis. 
St. Anna = 7 St. John the Baptist = Lucia 



334 APPENDIX. 

APPENDIX 2. 

" Wordsworth's Practical Philosophy." 

(Note to page 112 of England's Agnostic Poets.) 

For comparison with Swinburne's "Philosophy " let us take 
a cursory glance at Wordsworth's ( Cf. particularly, Tintern Abbey 
and Ode to Duty). Passionate pleasure is dissatisfying short of 
its limit, and at its limit sets in the reaction of pain. Social joys 
depend on a shifting ever self-readjusting w r orld of men ; all real 
relations are therefore subject to strain. Only two things abide 
with man : himself, his world of thought ; nature, his world of 
"eye and ear." Out of one of these, or both, must he extract 
his life's happiness. No perverse contempt is felt for " the grand 
elementary principle of pleasure " by which man " knows, and 
feels, and lives, and moves." Sympathy with pain itself " is pro- 
duced and carried on by subtle combinations with pleasure." 
(Preface to Lyrical Ballads.) His mission as a Poet is to increase 
man's world of joyous experience. He could do so by giving us 
an imaginative taste of what we would, but can not, experience — 
extending our being fictitiously, and after the poem is over, allow- 
ing us to shrink again to our ordinary dimensions — to feel perhaps 
the ache of discontent, and the fury of rebellion. He prefers to 
set before us always what we can but will not experience (i. e., 
can not because we will not), either from ignorance or perversity ; 
so, he extends the reader's being fictitiously, only to extend it 
really, perhaps, for the reader need not shrink. If he will keep 
his senses open (not clogged by prejudgments of the mind) " in a 
wise passiveness," and clear (not covered with dulling rust of pre- 
vious experience of sense, so that the memory of previous ex- 
periences precedes the new sensation instead of following it) ; 
if, in a word, he will "keep the young lamb's heart among the full- 
grown flocks," all that Wordsworth's poems offer him he can 
afterward find in nature about him wherever he happens to be. 

Wordsworth's peculiar mission, then, was to make men realize 
how much normal wholesome pleasure is within their reach day 
by day, if they will only possess their world of thought and their 
world of "eye and ear." It is with the latter we should begin: 
(1) Sounds, colors, perspectives, perfumes, etc., etc., are a source 
of vital joy accessible to almost all, quickening, stimulating, 
liable to no reaction, quiet, serene, incapable of being pushed to 



APPENDIX. 335 

the debatable limit this side of pain. (2) These happy sensations 
<jan be stored in memory (the "inward eye' : ), and all these 
pleasures can be had over and over again when we are banished 
from beautiful objects ; and when we are in the presence of 
nature after the complete tasting of the present delight we can 
by the help of memory and imagination have the added con- 
sciousness of past delight, prolonging so the present thrill. 
(3) The present pleasure face to face with nature is furthermore 
intensified by the gratifying consciousness of consequent memory 
pleasures in the future, so, as it were, anticipating the delights 
with which this present delight is pregnant. (4) The latent 
analogy of this outer world and its events (nature) to man's in- 
ner world (of thought) gradually divined, gives rise to a strange 
sense of kinship. (5) The gratitude for joys received from 
nature involved subtly a personification of nature — the recogni- 
tion of a Spiritual essense of Nature, an Immanent God to whom 
all this gratitude goes, and to whom the suul is akin. 

"Nature" indeed feeds man in his whole being; that is to 
say, through his healthy senses is offered him all that his highest 
faculties need : 

(a) Simple, unanalyzable wholesome pleasures (sensual satis- 
faction). 

(b) Giving him to observe the reign of law (intellectual satis- 
faction). 

(c) Furnishing so the spectacle of every particular thing 
existing for all others yet serving its own self in apparent 
unrestraint (the law of social order exemplified), whence Nature 
is called " the Soul of all his moral being " (moral satisfaction). 

(d) Impressions of supersensual quiet beauty (aesthetic satis- 
faction). 

(e) Serves as a conserver of his past (stimulating memory) 
and an anticipator of his future (stimulating imagination); in- 
deed, discovers to him a real sympathy with his inner life. 
■" What more can a friend do ? " (Affectional satisfaction.) 

N. B. For one not an egoist, a friend might furnish occasions 
for self-sacrifice, self-restraint, humility, etc. But, then, Words- 
worth undoubtedly was an egoist. 

(f) Since his body (manifestation) is adapted to Nature, the 
body (manifestation) doubtless of Spirit (intelligence, love) he 
must believe that Spirit akin to his own, and since It abides, he 
may conceive It to have produced that kinship and mutual fitness 



336 APPENDIX. 

for ultimate soul satisfying relations, and to deserve therefore as 
well as stimulate his gratitude and love ( devotional satisfaction). 

An " impulse from a vernal wood" can do more for us " than 
all the sages can," and teach us more of " moral evil and of good " 
because that impulse may be the quickening of " bright shoots of 
everlastingness " in us, and the realization of the sublimity of 
moral order which can not be imposed from without (since Nature 
is infinite and omnipotent), but is self-imposed, or rather wholly 
unconscious and unwilled, such as our own highest morality would 
be : — the unerring spontaneous expression of a beautiful character. 



APPENDIX 3. 

Shelley's Use of the Word Annihilation. 
(Note to page 169 of Prometheus Unbound.) 
It may help some readers to comment here on Shelley's pecu- 
liar use of the word annihilation and kindred words. Annihilation 
occurs in the description of the sea bottom as equivalent to that 
confusion which renders things indistinguishable and therefore 
in their individual character invisible and, so far as our knowl- 
edge is concerned, as though they were not. " Prodigious shapes 
huddled in gray annihilation." (Pr. Unb., Act IV, 1. 301.) It is 
used to signify the utter vanishing of a thing not merely in its 
character but in its substance. " Hate " is " drunk up by thirsty 
nothing," and "love burst in, rilling" its "void annihilation." 
(Id., 1. 354.) To assert that a thing is not, because removed from 
perception, were absurd. Shelley's famous negative argument for 
immortality, in the "Conclusion" of the "Sensitive Plant," de- 
pends on the very fact that not merely the minute but also the 
mighty " exceeds our organs," which limit us to only a few oc- 
taves of sound, one of light, and perhaps much less than one of 
thought. "The intense inane " in which man would be "pinna- 
cled" but for certain "clogs" (Pr. Unb., Act III, sc. iv, 1. 204) 
designates that which is meaningless to the human mind, because 
it transcends it, and defies exploration by its powers as at present 
developed (=" inane "); yet does subsist in virtue of inner energy 
(=" intense") only too "real" to get "reality " from the "gath- 
ered rays" of our present " thought." (Pr. Unb., Act III, sc. iii r 
1. 50.) If annihilation in (Epipsych., 1. 558), "one Heaven, one 
Hell, one immortality, and one annihilation" (unless taken as a 



APPENDIX. 337 

direct equivalent of Hell), dissolves the meaning of the whole line, 
nay, of the whole passionate period of which it is the last word, 
how can there be any " ripening " in the " winter of the tomb " to 
" a better bloom ?" (Epipsych., 1. 367.) Does it not, clearly, sig- 
nify the process of passing from the sphere of what is knowable by 
man as now constituted, and therefore " real " (definitely thought), 
into the sphere of the unknowable, which is "real," in the Shel- 
leyan sense of the word, only by passionate prophetic anticipation, 
with reference to powers yet wholly wanting, or rudimentary? 
As Shelley gives us an '• embodied Joy " (To a Skylark, st. 3; also 
read unbodied), does not "annihilation" mean relative annihila- 
tion, i. e., existence, intense, vivid, self-conscious, with all limita- 
tion and therefore all perceivability (that might serve to distin- 
guish it objectively from non-existence) abstracted? If this is 
what the word means, we find it harmonizes with all that Shelley 
says elsewhere of " life," " death," and " immortality." A denial 
of self (i. e., an annihilation, an assumption into the divine one 
Selfhood = an absorption), is the negative designation of what is 
as yet in positive terms unthinkable and unspeakable. 



APPENDIX 4. 

lOXE AXD PAXTHEA. 

(Note to page 177 of Prometheus Unbound.) 

Put in parallel columns the respective speeches of lone and 
Panthea and add what is said about them. It becomes clear how 
definite was Shelley's conception of them, or rather how consist- 
ent with one conception only of them, is all that he makes them 
say to and of one another. Tone is always first to see and enjoy 
the outer appearance, to be enraptured, or repelled by hor- 
ror; "beauty" gives her "voice" (while it drowns Panthea's) 
(Act 1, 1. 767), which by the way, is the beauty of colors; she feels 
"delight from the past sweetness." (Act IV, 1. 180). Kavished 
by her dream of Prometheus's release, she wakes with no definite 
ideas; unable to tell what she seeks (for she knows not), only sure 
it is " something sweet since it is sweet even to desire it ;" though 
" before," she " always knew what she desired " and never " found 
delight to wish in vain." (Act II, sc. i, 1. 94.) Clearly she is not 
" Hope." To me she seems the Perception of Beauty (and there- 



338 APPENDIX. 

fore of ugliness) in the sense world, and in our inner mental repro- 
duction of it. The meaning of what she sees she has to get of 
Panthea. 

Panlhea is the "sister" to the "Glory Unbeheld" of Asia, 
" her companion " and her " own chosen one " (Act II, sc. v, 1. 38), 
her "shadow." (Act II, sc. i, 1. 70.) She is a living sympathy 
between the Soul of Man, fallen, and the Soul of Nature, solitary 
and obscured. Asia sees Prometheus in her eyes. (Act II, sc. i, 
1. 110.) Panthea is the first to worship the transfigured Asia, but, 
note, she "feels" and "sees not," even can "scarce endure the 
radiance of her beauty." (Act II, sc. v, 1. 17.) She signifies not 
"Faith," which, as used in the New Testament, means primarily 
"personal trust," and only secondarily "credence in what I have 
not experienced, due to personal trust in one who has;" she is 
rather that which intuitively seizes the meaning of what lone en- 
joys externally. lone is Perception, Panthea Divination. Per- 
ception of what beauty there is about him never forsakes Prome- 
theus. Divination, spiritual understanding, does; but only to 
carry him to Asia, and to share in her quest for his freedom. She 
is, then, that power whereby the Soul of Man, though he can not 
see Ideal Nature, yet obtains for himself the assurance that she 
continues to be, that she is no mere remembered dream, but a 
living, if absent, fact. To say that she is Spiritual "Insight," as 
Prof. Scudder does, is well, but to identify this with "Faith," in 
any Christian sense, is perilous; besides, Panthea is always "in- 
sight" into the "sight" which is lone ; and when Panthea goes to 
Asia, we feel that lone is still with her (at least in what she means), 
though as persons of the drama they are sundered for a while. 



APPENDIX 5. 

Coleridge's Theosophy. 
(Note to page 195 of Prometheus Unbound.) 
With Shelley's it is interesting to compare Coleridge's The- 
osophy : 

" 'Tis the sublime of man 
Our noontide majesty to know ourselves 
Parts and proportions of one wondrous whole! " 

— (Religious Musings.) 
"The savage roams, 
Feeling himself, his oivn low self, the ivhole ; 



APPENDIX. 339 

When he by sacred sympathy might make 

The whole one Self. . . ." (Religious Musings.) 

'"Tis Gon 
Diffused through all that doth make all one whole." . . . (lb.) 
". . . as one body seems the aggregate 
Of atoms numberless, each organized ; 
So by a strange and dim similitude 
Infinite myriads of self-conscious minds 
Are one all-conscious Spirit." (The Destiny of Nations.) 

"The drowsed soul 
. . . of its nobler nature 'gan to feel 
Dim recollections, and thence soared to hope. . . . 
From hope and firmer faith to perfect love 
Attracted and absorbed : and centered there 
God only to behold, and know, and feel, 
Till by exclusive consciousness of God 
(All self-annihilated) it shall make 
God its identity : God all in all ! 
We and our Father One !" (Religious Musings.) 
All that meets the bodily sense I deem symbolical. (The 
Destiny of Nations.) 

"Treading . . . all visible things 
As steps that upward to the Father's throne 
Lead. . . ." (Religious Musings.) 
He who has this philosophy and takes it seriously finds that 
" from himself he flies, 
Stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze 
Views all creation ; and he loves it all. 
And blesses it, and calls it very good." (lb.) 
Hence the Doctrine of Universal Brotherhood : 
" Nature . . . may well employ 
Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart 
Awake to Love and Beauty. 
No sound is dissonant which tells of life." 

— (This Lime-tree Bower My Prison.) 
Even the " foal of an ass " would he take with him 

" in the dell 
Of peace in mild equality to dwell." (To a Young Ass.) 
Hence the whole myth of the Ancient Mariner, his doom pro- 
ceeding from a recklessness of inferior life, his slavation from the 



340 APPENDIX. 

sense of beauty in things usually deemed foul, so that " a spring 
of love gushed from his heart," which made him forget his own 
present anguish, nay even all remorse for his old sin. The final 
moral to the wedding guest who had hastened to the conventional 
celebration of sexual love 

" The dear God who loveth us 
He made and loveth all" v 
caused the hearer to " turn from the bridegroom's door" in the 
realization of the unfitness of the usual romantic passion to share 
with God his sublimest name. 



APPENDIX 6. 

Shelley's Serpent Myth. 
(Note to page 197 of Shelley's Prometheus Unbound.) 
Just at this point it may not be amiss to elucidate a minor 
difficulty. 

In Act II, sc. iii, 1. 97, the potential liberation of Prometheus 
(though, of course, regarded as good) is called "the snake-like 
doom." 

In Act IV, 1. 567, the evil, previously impersonated by Jupiter, 
is spoken of as 
"The serpent that would clasp her (Eternity) with his length." 
Thus, " snake " or " serpent " is the form given to both good 
and evil. The solution of this enigma should not be sought in 
the double symbolism of the snake (wisdom, cunning), but in a 
myth which Shelley has himself given us. 

In Act III, sc. i, 1. 72, Jupiter is a •' vulture " and Demogor- 
gon a " snake " " dropping in inextricable fight, into a shoreless 
sea." In the first Canto of " Laon and Cythna," we are told 
how in the beginning of things Good and Evil wrestled for su- 
premacy and 

"Evil triumphed, and the spirit of evil 

. . . did revel 
In victory . . . for his immortal foe 
He changed from starry shape, beauteous and mild, 
To a dire snake. . . ." 
" The darkness lingering o'er the dawn of things, 
Was evil's breath and life ; this made him strong 
To soar aloft with overshadowing wings; 



APPENDIX. 341 

And the great Spirit of Good did creep among 
The nations of mankind, and every tongue 
Cursed and blasphemed him as he passed ; for none 
Knew good from evil" (St. 27, 28.) 
Only the woman by her intuitive penetration understood the 
good snake. 

But, after Prometheus' liberation, his curse on evil has 
taken effect. Evil is obliged to realize itself to the full, and 
to appear itself. The mutual transformation first effected by the 
Spirit of Evil is now reversed. Good resumes its " soaring" sun- 
ward flight, on eagle-wings, with unblinded eagle-eyes, whilst evil 
" crawls " on its biblical belly once more, and eats dust and ashes. 
So intolerable, however, was the temporary disguise of the Spirit 
of Evil, as the "inspired good," that Shelley changed, as we have 
seen, in Act III, sc. i, the "eagle " of "Laon and Cythna" to a 
" vulture," which might seem an eagle only to very bad orni- 
thologists ! 

APPEKDIX 7. 

Byron as Chanter of Personality. 
(Note 6, page 311, of Walt Whitman.) 

As Chanter of personality Whitman had a predecessor in 
Lord Byron, the spell of whose poetry on his contemporaries was 
due in large measure to the novel importance accorded the "in- 
dividual will." In the early romances the integrity of the indi- 
vidual was made to seem of more importance than moral laws. 
In Childe Harold's Pilgrimage we were given a passionate diary, 
and in Don Juan a sarcastic one, of that defiant individuality. In 
Manfred he appears as hero. The world can not yield him ob- 
livion when too late he has found out that 

" The tree of knowledge is not that of life." 

Nor can the beauty of it, for he would have to surrender him- 
self to it — a thing he will not do. Every thing speaks to him of 
himself. Summoning to his aid magical powers, he brings before 
himself the shadow of Astarte, his beloved, for the destruction 
of wdiose happiness, it is, his soul is suffering perpetual torture. 
He has long ceased to justify "his" deeds "unto" himself — 
" the last infirmity of evil." All left to him is self-mastery, 
making: 

" His torture tributarv to his will. . . ." 



342 APPENDIX. 

" No other spirit . . . hath 
A soul like his — or power upon his soul" 
For his power over spirits 

" Was purchased by no compact, . . . 
Bat by superior science." 
He did not bow to Arirnanes, prince of devils : 

" Bid him bow down to that which is above him 
The overruling Infinite .... 
And we will kneel together." 
He utterly rejects the comforts of Christianity, as hitherto 
understood, which are offered by the Abbot: 

" Whate'er 
I may have been, or am, doth rest between 
Heaven and myself. I shall not choose a mortal 
To be my mediator." 

" There is no power . . . 
Can exorcise . . . 

From out the unbounded spirit, the quick sense 
Of its own sins, wrongs, sufferance, and revenge 
Upon itself; there is no future pang 
Can deal that justice on the self-condemned 
He deals on his own soul." 

As he has refused the help of heaven, so does he defy the 
powers of hell : 

"Away. I'll die as I have lived— alone. . . ." 
" I do defy ye, — though I feel my soul 

Is ebbing from me, yet I do defy ye ; . . . 
What ye take 

Shall be ta'en limb by limb." 
" I stand 

Upon my strength — I do defy — deny — 

Spurn back, and scorn ye !" 
" Back to thy hell ! 

Thou hast no power upon me, that I feel ; 

Thou never shall possess me, that I know ; 

What I have done is done." 
"Thou did'st not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt me; 

I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey — 



APPENDIX. 343 

But was my own destroyer, and will be 

My own hereafter. — Back, ye baffled fiends! 

The hand of Death is on me — but not yours !" 
A strong protest all through, surely, against the immoral no- 
tion (however religious it may be) that we are but a battle-field 
for angels and devils ! How wretched is he whose individuality 
and its exceeding pride sunders him from his fellows is also shown 
in Manfred. What draws us in Manfred is not however the fact 
of his misery, but his tremendous sense of responsibility, his in- 
domitable courage, his determination for good or ill to be himself, 
and to consider no dastardly escape — putting his guilt on an inno- 
cent Savior — as worthy of a man ; yet at the same time equally 
prepared to extirpate the cowardice that would throw the burden 
on evil spirits. For this powerful protest against whatever would 
destroy the dignity of the soul, we must honor Byron, and realize 
fully the advance that has been made in this direction when we 
compare the last scene of Manfred with the pitiful moral break- 
down of Faustus in the great Marlowe's drama, which does duty 
for catastrophe, and has been so extravagantly praised, not, alas, 
always for its poetry, but for the indirect tribute it is supposed to 
pay to a moribund theology. Does poor Kit turn in his grave, 
when that scene is thus praised ? 



APPENDIX 8. 

A Hostile Critique on Whitman. 
(Note to page 245 of Walt Whitman.) 

The Apostle of Chaotisra. The University of the South 
Magazine, predecessor of the Sewanee Review, May, 1890: 

" We have before us a book, and one, whatever may be said 
of it, unique in character. It purports to contain poetry. Capi- 
tals at the beginning of jagged lines inform the eye of that de- 
liberate intention. The whole is launched defiantly into the 
world. From hearsay we gather that Wordsw T orth's prophecy has 
been at length fulfilled. Surely, he who chanted immortality of 
idiot boys and Peter Bells would hail this robust disciple of his 
theory who uses the language of semi-cultivated men to express 
life as fully as he perceives it, unflinchingly, forcibly, without re- 
gard to aesthetic or ethical conventions, a prophet superior to all 
time-honored artifice. The Master put great faith in his reader's 



344 APPENDIX. 

longevity, the more advanced Disciple, in his unliability to 
nausea. . . . Was the book written solely to obtain notoriety 
for one who had vainly striven after legitimate fame ? To be 
novel at any price was his purpose, think you? To disprove 
Solomon's wisdom by letting the sun shine on something new? 
All had been tried that seemed not in absolute violation of beauty 
and decency. There remained for an ambitious conqueror only 
what had been hitherto contemned. Better be king of gutter-filth 
and " fee tor," to plant one's foot on the world's dung-hill, than to 
cower, one of many, be they never so noble, or to be jostled on the 
thronged steps of shining temples where none seem great but the 
superhuman." 

" I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the 
taste of myself." So a dim hope is really extended to us, lest we 
might fancy ignorance and folly were trying to pass for inspira- 
tion, thanks to a veil of chaotic incomprehensibility, and that for 
aught we knew a maniac might be the veiled prophet! 

Any definition of verse stricter than one which might admit 
the best utterances of Whitman, would exclude those of David, 
Solomon, Ezekiel, Job, and St. John the Divine. 

u Faces so pale with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet 
Draw close, but speak not. 
Phantoms of countless lost, 

Invisible to the rest, henceforth my companions, 
Follow me ever — desert me not while I live. 
Sweet are the blooming checks of the living— sweet are the 

musical voices sounding, 
But sweet, ah, sweet are the dead with their silent eyes! " 

Will this be prose, and Matthew Arnold's " Philomela" verse, 
and consequently poetry ? Read the closing strophe of the 
" Passage to India." Do you pronounce it utterly prose ? Has it 
not more fire than much American " poetry ? " 

Verse of English poets has hitherto been rhythmic within 
metric limits somewhat arbitrarily adopted, but once adopted, in- 
violable. Here we have language intended to be rhythmic with- 
out such fixed metric limits. Shall then the best utterances of 
Whitman be confined forever deep in a Dantesque hell of prose, 



APPENDIX. 345 

without hope of purgatory or heaven ? Had we only these best 
utterances, a case might be made. Doubtless, Whitman consci- 
entiously thought that, except in those rare cases where he 
rhymed intentionally, he had succeeded in casting all forms to the 
wind. To obey any restrictions, whether of fair precedent or 
reason, would have been quite inconsistent in the "Adamic " citi- 
zen and " chanter" of these states; hence he resolved to take his 
natural limitations for his only law. Nevertheless, to say that he 
" escaped form " were absurd. Whenever he is most harmonious, 
he can be scanned, and we can not doubt but that in his heart he 
preferred those passages. Furthermore, he is fast bound in the 
most illiberal of mannerisms. Having rejected meters, he 
adopted as his perpetual style ejaculatory abruptness, impas- 
sioned contempt for grammar and logic. Anacolouthon trans- 
figured is his favorite mold for " ecstatic chants." Miltonic latin- 
isms sorely out of atmosphere ; barbarisms that career through 
his pages like Huns putting all harmony to fire and sword ; vul- 
garities that rasp and rip ; inconceivable pilings of detached 
words, formless pyramids without visible apex or foundation, 
very towers of Babel with plentiful confusion of tongues — English 
Spanish, French, and Slang — to the utter consternation of the 
reader, and the temporary prostration of his aesthetic and moral 
judgment. Let us see what is possible to this contemner of 
style. Why, a frenetic upward flight of nine hundred and fifteen 
words — no rest, no real connection — a thunder-cloud of crows to 
obscure the sun, and deafen the earth with hoarse cries. Here is 
the peccant period, yet innocent compared with some of its Kith 
and Kin. (Song of Myself, Strophe, 33.) 

In " Salut au Monde " we are regaled with geography ecstatics 
insane, and foaming at the mouth : — nations, cities, rivers, mount- 
ains, all in a stupendous whirl of incoherence, introduced by 8 
Walt Whitman's, 18 I hears, 16 I sees, 2 I beholds (on account of the 
word's superior rarity patronizing 9 some clauses), 19 others, 2 
wait ats, with a redoubtable array of cities, 50 I sees, 5 I am cover- 
ings, with 24 cities, 1 I belong in with 7, 1 1 descend with a full stop. 
Then with renewed ardor, having touched ground, 12 1 sees, 1 
I look on, 1 I see at, 1 i" look on, 8 I sees, 27 exclamatory yous, 2 all 
yous, 2 and yous, 5 each of us's 18 yous, 2 I do's, etc., etc. This is 
climax without doubt, but with respect to infinite distances, 
where parallel lines meet and other strange things will occur from 



346 APPENDIX. 

time to time ; ay, a climax, to be sure, leviathen-like and 
choice! . . . 

We begin to understand his poetic rapacity and would be led 
to fancy the digestive powers of his " omnivorous " lines excellent, 
but for " belched words." And yet he says: "I have offered my 
style to every one !" For him the muses are undaunted Bacchantes, 
hands gored with the blood of Orpheus, feet frantic around the 
huge anacolouthon which serves for throne to Jove, shouting in- 
sanely and tossing out their hydrophobic carols. 

As has been implied, his Rhapsodies are for the most part 
didactic. Very much precious time is spent in assuring us with 
exquisite irrelevancy that he sings. Could frequent reiteration 
change falsehood into truth, some would doubtless become 
convinced of that would-be fact. It is no exaggeration to state 
that his usual song consists in saying over and over again that he 
is about to sing, and cataloguing the subjects of future " re- 
citatives," "ecstatic songs," " chants," and " carols." Evidently 
this ends in becoming more formal even than the stilted invoca- 
tions w r hich Byron satirized in " Hail, muse, etc., we left Don 
Juan." 

Sympathy and manliness (although the former is often un- 
bearably blasphemous and the latter brutal, or bestial), are his most 
captivating qualities." 

Alas ! Who, or rather what, is his God ? ... It is univer- 
sally inclusive — a sort of aqua regia that dissolves all hetero- 
geneous substance into homogeneous (protoplasmic ?) liquid, which 
may be taken like a patent medicine for all soul and skin diseases 
in homoeopathic doses. "Why should I pray? Why should I 
venerate and be ceremonious ? . . . I find no sweeter fat than 
sticks to my own bones." In my case, I should prefer that 
interesting comparison to be post-mortem. "And I say to man- 
kind, be not curious about God." " I see something of God each 
hour of the twenty-four." " I find letters from God dropped in 
the street," thanks to a trans-stellar postal service, "and every 
one signed by God's name." We believe we have reached a 
materialistic pantheism with a ubiquitous quasi-gazeous " deus in 
machina." In spite of lack of " curiosity," like Mephistopheles 
he likes to keep on good terms " with the Old Man" (we quote 



APPENDIX. 347 

from Goethe), and so the average man represented by Walt 
Whitman pays occasionally a personal visit to his Collective or 
Average God. " My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain ! " 

I this (referring to the Square Deiflc) the sublimity of drunk- 
enness ? Nay, hear this Vesuvian burst of adoration : " Santa 
Spirita," etc., etc. 

Let us follow him step by step, from his Nihilistic Theology 
and Chaotistic Ethics, to his more positive creed : " Knowing the 
perfect fitness of things, while they discuss I am silent and go 
and bathe and admire myself." "To look on my rose-colored 
flesh ! . . . To be this incredible God I am !" Lo, Polyphemus, 
his only eye put out by Lust, playing at Narcissus by the stream 
side ! " If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the 
spread of my body or any part of it, etc., etc.;" for, then, in spite 
of the Doctrine of Indifference, dinned in our ears over and over 
again, he specializes from his belligerent Pan-Fetichism with an 
incredible enthusiasm ; and, after substituting " meat " for " flesh," 
"procreation" for "creation," "breeding" for "love" in the 
technical terminolog}^, and furthermore, supplementing it with a 
munificent new vocabulary of hilarious diabolism, he attempts to 
establish in utterly unquotable ravings his more perfectly evolved 
system of Neo-phallicism. 

Yea, thou prophet, thou Apostle of Chaotism, we greet thee ! 
Hail, thou that art — nay, let us grow calm — only a man, rude, and 
glorying in his rudeness; crude, and magnifying crudeness; dar- 
ing, brutal, sympathic, bestial, atheistic, nihilistic, socialistic, 
American, cosmopolitan, materialistic, mystic, dreamer, ranter- 
nay, let us not call him fool, let us not call him maniac, — only the 
benign Apostle of Chaotism! He who finds "humanity" too 
narrow a term and would substitute " animality," which is less 
exclusive ! 

This rhapsodist, this poet (if we may call a sewer-rat astray 
in the secret parts of Parnassus by such names), although he is 
ever raving of this land, God be praised, he is not representative 
of these States, nor of Canada (spelt with a K), nor of the Potta- 
wattami Indians, primitive though they be. He does not stand 
for America, nor for this age, nor for mankind in any historic 



348 APPENDIX. 

age. Catullus, Boccaccio, Rabelais, were prudes-arnong-Puritans to 
him. He is a monstrosity that can be classed in no known geo- 
logical age, nor Pliocene, nor Miocene ; but in one only, of which. 
he is the sole relic, and which by analogy to these we might term 
conveniently the Obscene. 



Few like to admit that they have been converted. It is a 
dangerous admission. It implies the possibility of further con- 
version. We forget that firmness, obstinate tenacity, virtues in 
conduct are vices in thought. To be ever ready to change when 
superior reasons are against us, is just that unchangeable loyalty 
to truth we commend. We must abandon the lower round of 
the ladder for the higher, be constantly inconstant, if we would 
mount. 

It may seem a questionable expedient to print in this Appendix 
extracts from an insolent critique. Still, the extracts when hos- 
tile, are so ferocious as to condemn themselves. They will, how- 
ever serve to prove that the writer of this essay went through the 
usual phases of amazement, horror, indignation, fury, exaspera- 
tion, disapproval, qualified dislike, qualified liking, till at length 
he is forced by common honesty to confess himself an ardent 
lover of much that our great American champion of Democracy,, 
political and spiritual, has written. 

For my own part, I am not coward enough to be afraid to own 
my whole-hearted loyalty to the teacher, even though I may 
differ from him on many points deemed cardinal by most men- 
He himself desires us to be independent of him. He bids us not 
" look through his eyes," but our own. The Whitmanite does- 
not worship Whitman, but joins Whitman in the worship of 
independent manhood, striving to be himself the man. 

Many make extravagant claims for Whitman. Others still 
think it worth their while to vent their wrath in vehement 
epithets, or express a refined scorn by a slight lift of the tip of 



APPENDIX. 349 

1;he aquiline nose when his name is mentioned. For my part I 
am content to be in such good company as I find myself, when 
among admirers and reverers of Whitman. Not English literary 
men alone — Tennyson, A. C. Swinburne, the Eossettis, E. Dowden, 
J. A. Symonds, Mrs. Gilchrist, Miss Blind, and a host of others de- 
servedly famous — but Americans of various types, like the Sted- 
mans, father and son, John Burroughs, Whitelaw Reid, Charles A. 
Dana, John Swinton, George W. Childs, and many, many more, who 
knew the man as well as his work, and often loved the work for 
the sake of the man whom they have somehow succeeded in im- 
posing on us as the " Good Gray Poet," and the " Camden Sage," 
titles which will do more for his fame, surely than the laureate- 
ship did for Wordsworth, or the barony for Tennyson — nay, more 
than all laudatory critiques and biographies. What 's in a name ? 
An influence, second only to a living character. Even his haters 
and assailers bow before the venerable, picturesque champion of 
the doctrine of the "God" in any and every man, the prophet 
of a great America about to be discovered, when the chaos of 
these states has become cosmos by the creation of a new type of 
..athletic, yet spiritual, manhood. 






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